No method, Just Madness

Pssssssssssssst!!!!

2007-05-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

[Whispered:] Hey guys. Over here. Shhhh. I don't want Blogger to hear. He's kind of sensitive these days, what with all the exporting and stuff he's been forced to do. I don't want to aggrivate him any further. But, that being said...

I’m happy to announce that nearly all the bruising and edema, caused by the recent html-based operations going on back here, has finally resolved. (Unfortunately, there’s still some chafing.) To celebrate, I’ve baked you all a triple crème brie with some brown sugar and pinenuts on top and set it out with some nice crackers. And there’s champagne! So, without further adieu, come on over to check out my new do and my new digs!

Please adjust your links to the new location: lacubanagringa.com

Perhaps just a little high-dose Ibuprofen will do...

2007-05-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

Just to keep you informed, Blog and I are doing well in the post-anesthesia care unit. Surgery went well…but we’re still a bit hazy from all the nipping and tucking and htmling…and I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for us to take the bandages off quite yet. Shouldn’t be too much longer, though. In the meantime, we’ll carry on with business as usual around here until the big reveal.

And for my loyal seven readers, be prepared to change web addresses for this here No Method, Just Madness is movin’ to a new house! Exciting times! Will definitely keep you in the loop!

The Family Jewels

2007-05-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

Daddio’s nuptuals are quickly approaching. He and La Italiana want a small, humble wedding. And to help add that extra personal touch, The Brit and I are going to contribute. He’ll be the wedding photographer (he did a great job at one of my good friends’ weddings in Mexico) and I’ll be making the bride’s bouquet. I’m also in charge of decorating the banister to the staircase down which La Italiana will be making her fashionably late appearance. Me, faux tafetta and tool are about to become deeply involved like we've never been before. (Well, except for that one halloween where I was Like A Virgin.)

In any event, Daddio sent me an email the other day regarding our large, extended family, some of whom I last met when I was a child:

Dear Daughter -

I don't know if I told you this, but my aunt Amelia, her husband, Raynaldo, and my cousin Tuto will be joining us at the wedding. I wanted to send you a picture of Amelia so that you would recognize her in case I didn't get a chance to introduce you first.

She is a rather demure and plain looking person as you will see by her picture.

Love, Dad

Then he attached the following photo:

To which I replied:

Daddio -

It’s quite clear to whom we can attribute the swell looks in the family.

I can’t wait to tuck myself into one of her inviting wrinkles and take a drag off of her cigar.

Love,
LCG

Hopefully we won' t have much post-op pain

2007-04-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming changes on this site. With help from my very engineery and technologically superior Gringito Mio, my blog is going under the knife. In celebration of our six month blogiversary, Blog and I decided she’d get a brow lift and a jowl tuck. I rallied for the liposuction, but Blog here thought that having a big ass builds character…so she vetoed the idea. Gawd, she can be such a bitch.

In all seriousness, there are some serious html shenanigans and hullabaloo goings on back here behind the curtain. And, if we press all the right keys, we’ll have a new look and even a new, exciting masthead…with a real life picture of an identifiable part of my person!! For those of you who follow along here regularly (and I think there are seven of you now), you’re probably thinking that part might be my ass. You’re mistaken. (Though not mistaken for thinking I actually considered it!) (I did.) (But even I have standards of decency.) (Ha!)

Keep your fingers crossed that we don’t somehow manage to html ourselves a big, red, blinking delete button!

Jetlagged? Or just the usual tomfoolery?

2007-04-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

We were stopped at a red light when a slightly disheveled woman crossed the street using the crosswalk just in front of my car. She looked to be young, mid-thirties maybe, and was carrying a tattered, balled-up, wooly blanket. It struck me as odd because she was carrying it much in the same way one might carry a swaddled infant, or a full porcelain punch bowl, across a room.

“Hmm, that looks a bit peculiar, don’t you think?”

The Brit brought his head forward off of the headrest in my front passenger seat and opened one eye to look, first at me and then at the woman. Having just arrived back from his two-week business trip the day before, his body was still on China time.

“What do you suppose she’s carrying in there? A baby?”

He opened his other eye. “Hmm. That…or maybe a small dog. [Pause.] Or a great big bunch of vegetables.”

Cigarettes & Alcohol

2007-04-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

No one was coming for his heart or his liver, and it was clear why. No sooner had we taken a scalpel to the skin over his abdomen…my attending starting down by the pubis while I started from up under the xiphoid…we met at the navel…we got through the even poorer protoplasm below it and entered into his peritoneum to find a belly full of ascites fluid. His bowels, thin, pale and filled with air and succus, bobbed up to the surface of the yellow fluid. I placed a suction device deep into his abdomen and watched as the fluid drained out, much like it would from a bathtub with the drain pulled. Liters were drained and what remained were the sad contents of his jaundiced abdomen. The now visible liver did not glisten as expected, and it certainly wasn’t its usual color. It was cobblestoned and knobby, cirrhotic, tortured by this man’s very close and very daily relationship with alcohol. No. We wouldn’t be touching that. Or his pancreas, which was nearly calcified through and through likely from several bouts of alcoholic pancreatitis. His blood vessels, conduits which should be smooth and elastic, were crunchy...hardened by his slavery to cigarettes. Attempts to cannulate them revealed rinds and rinds of yellow, cheesy, calcified atheroschlerotic plaque, filling in the lumen, obstructing blood flow. It was a wonder this man’s legs were getting any blood at all.

We were only there for his kidneys. Kidneys that were risky to take, having come from someone in such poor shape. Kidneys that someone in a nearby state desperately needed. Kidneys that this man’s wife had graciously signed the consent form to donate despite the grief she must have been feeling after loosing a husband who, just three weeks prior, had decided to give up both cigarettes and alcohol. A hypertensive hemorrhagic stroke robbed him of his chance to try out his new life. He was only 51.

Far too young if you ask me.

I'll try to get through this without throwing up a third time

2007-04-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

Get your barf bags ready for the second installment of Teenage Turmoil…

March 22, 1991

Dear Diary -

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, OH MY GOSH!!!! You will never believe what happened today at school. Before I tell you, I have to say it was the best day I have had since the beginning of this quarter!

Consider that, prior to this, my best day ever was the day I got a new pair of pink and white British Knight sneakers, that should put things into perspective for you.

Anyways, I’ll tell you now. Oooh, I’m getting butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it. Ok. Let me calm down...

God help me if I ever have a daughter who doesn’t go straight from 8 years of age to 24. Because if I have to deal with this kind of silliness, I fear there will be a lot of eye rolling and vomiting. On my part.

Alright. At the way beginning of the school day when I first walked into school, this little short kid came up to ask me if I would go out with Peter.

Yep…this is back when boys knew how to really charm a lady. They’d send a messenger. Or, alternatively, pass a note in class that said:

Do you like me?
Yes
No
Hope so.
Love, Peter

The men of my age group today could really learn from the 13 year olds of my past. They were truly well versed at the art of wooing.

And I said “Why, did he ask you to ask me?” And he said yes. Then I said “Well, if he really wanted to go out with me he would ask me himself.” So then the boy said ok and then left and I went to my first and second period.

Nice. Check me OUT! I was girly (and vomitously so) back then, but at least I had balls. Or, descended ovaries, rather. Whatever.

Then, during the break, I was so nervous and I didn’t know what to say if he asked me so Miss Legs For Miles and I and Heidi went walking around. Then we arrived at the lockers just as the bell rang. So that was a relief.

I know, ‘cause PHEW! I might have, like, totally passed out or whatever if he’d actually asked me out. Totally. Like, for real.

Then we went to English. (Oh and by the way during break Shauna pulled me aside and said “I wanted to tell you this before you found it out the wrong way from someone else. I went up to Peter and asked him if he was going to ask you out and he said he was. And I said ‘Good, because I want to be there when she rejects you.’ I meant to say ‘IF she rejects you.’ I’m sorry! Because now he’s mad.”)

Eww. I just threw up in my mouth a little from how sooo 90210, The Early Years this is. Gawd!

Ok, anyways, Paul looked mad and I have English with him so that was kind of bad. I had such a bad stomach ache. But I lived.

Ya don’t say.

Then next came math. And I have that class with him too. In that class (Shauna is in it too) Shauna apologized to Peter about saying that. And he still looked mad.

Lunch was next. I went to my locker and met everyone there then we all went to the lunch area and…ate! Then when we all finished, we went to the PE area because there was a basketball game between the teachers and students. But when we got there and we’d already watched part of the game I had to go to the bathroom. So Miss LFM, Heidi and I departed from the group and went to the “little girls room.”

Ahh yes…the Must Pee In A Pack Syndrome. I remember this. It is widely known in the scientific community that the females' adolescent urethral sphincter can only be coaxed into relaxation, so as to allow micturition, while in the presence of at least two other female friends. Something occurs in the early twenties…oh, I don’t know, something called Growing Up, that eradicates this Syndrome.

Then since lunch was almost over and I wanted to go find Paul because I wanted to tell him that I didn’t tell Shauna to say that we went to the lockers. And as usual he was there with all his friends. So I said “Peter, I didn’t want or tell Shauna to say what she said.” And he said “Oh that’s okay don’t worry about it.”

Among the many things that make me want to hurl about this embarrassingly long play-by-play of the faux mating rituals I participated in as an adolescent, is the pure disdain I seemed to have had at the time for proper punctuation. Dude, seriously. Where are the commas? (I’m sure that when I’m re-reading this blog when I’m 80, I’ll be like, “Dude. What's with all the sentence fragments?”)

So then the bell rang and Shauna and Lana showed up. And ofcourse they were asking Peter if he was going to ask me out. And I didn’t hear him all the way but I think he said something like “The girl hates me.” And Shauna and Lana were saying “No, no, she told us she was seriously considering it.” And Peter didn’t say anything, he just kept nodding or something like that. So I just turned around and said “Yes, I am considering it!”

[Leans over to barf in emesis basin strategically placed an arms length away in anticipation of the nausea this diary entry would elicit.]

And Peter looked at me kind of shocked and said “You…you are?”

So I smiled and then took my books out of the locker and put them in my book bag. Then I was just standing there waiting for Shauna who was still pestering Peter (we had next period together so that’s why I was waiting). So then finally Paul just looked at me and said “Will you go out with me?” And I said “Let me think about it over the weekend ok?” And he said “Ok.” And then we went to our separate classes.

Let me think about it? After all that, after all the build up and the butterflies and the barfing (oh, wait, that was just now, not then), I said Let Me Think About It??? What a dweeb.

Then at the end of the day he waited up for me and we walked to the bus together (but we ride separate buses).

So it was a short walk. Regardless, I’m sure, in my adolescent peabrain, I’d already decided I wanted to have twelve of his ~~blue~~ green eyed babies by the end of it.

Exciting day wasn’t it? I think the answer I’m going to give him is quite obvious, don’t you?

[Barfs again. Then dry heaves for a while.]

I don't have children yet...

2007-04-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

…so you, my dear fortunate five readers, get to hear about my plants.

I’ve always loved plants. They’re not unlike babies in that they’re pretty and they thrive on little more than fluids. Unlike babies, though, they don’t cry, they don’t chap your nipples, they don’t poo, and they photosynthesize. Which is handy. I haven’t reviewed my plant biology in a while, but I’m fairly certain that, in addition to converting CO₂, they also convert the noxious methane gases that are expelled in our household into sweet, sweet oxygen. Bonus!

I’ve recently taken an interest in succulents. Mostly because they are flawlessly symmetrical, captivatingly beautiful, and incredibly low maintenance.

But also because the word "succulent" is such an enjoyable word to say out loud. Say it with me…

Succulent.
Succulent.
Succulent.

Kinda feels like you’re saying something naughty. But you’re not! (Bonus!!)

The word "succulent" is gettin' so much play in my house right now...it's all "Check my succulents out!" here and "Wanna touch my succulents?" there and there's even a little bit of...

My succulents bring all the boys to the yard, and they're like...it's better than yours...damn right, it's better than yours...I could teach you, but I'd have to charge...

Okay. I’ll shut up already.

(Succulent.)

Apparently I’m a glass 95% empty kinda gal

2007-04-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

Never to be underestimated is my consistent ability to hone in on that which could potentially be spilled.

Within the last 48 hours, I’ve managed to…

…empty the very red, and very carpet-staining contents of an entire glass of wine onto the carpet in my bedroom.
…topple over a freshly opened bottle of beer, also onto the carpet in my bedroom (though, sadly, not in the same location as the red wine…that might have actually helped dilute out the cabernet).
…drain my travel mug of nearly every last drop of my morning green tea into the small compartment in my car that holds my various hospital ID badges, assorted pens, my pager, and a few old triple A batteries.

And I was sober for every single deluge.

I think I missed my calling as the fourth of the Three Stooges. Either that, or I am just not cut out to be an optimist.

Supporting evidence for the argument that I have bad wazoo karma

2007-04-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

There are two people who I don’t particularly enjoy visiting. One is the dentist and the other is the gynecologist. This has largely to do with the fact that the dentist tends to stick cold, metal instruments into my mouth and the gynecologist tends to stick cold, metal instruments into my wazoo.¹ If I had to rank how I’d prefer to spend my time, spending it with either of these two individuals would go right under performing a trapeze act while suspended from fish hooks looped through my eyelids…which, incidentally, I haven’t tried yet, but only because I’ve been a bit busy. I hear it’s a total rush.

The only reason I bring this up is because I had to visit the gyno last week for an annual exam. Apparently, there were many a ladyfolk in stirrups that morning, as there was a bit of a wait for the doc. And as I lay there reclined on the cold, disinfected (I hope!) exam table, naked except for a remarkably large paper napkin, I looked back on all of my gynecologic experiences over the last decade. As luck should have it, all of my gynos have been almost exclusively men. And not for any particular reason other than they always seem to have more appointments available. Which is not surprising…women tend to want to see women for matters of the snatch. Me? I’m simply not that discriminating.

It’s a wonder, though, that I’m not…especially when one considers my very first experience with a male gynecologist. It still goes down in history as one of my most embarrassing moments ever. I was 19 and similarly reclined on a similar table in a similar exam room with the same Eau D’disinfectant. The paper napkin was much, much smaller, though. (Lucky for me, so was my ass.) I don’t think I breathed during the entire exam. The resulting cerebral hypoxia, coupled with the vivid images conjured by my gynecologist’s lengthy explanation of how he thought we should shove a few trocars into my abdomen to laparascopically diagnose the endometriosis he thought I had, culminated in me passing out. I came to with the paper napkin having flopped completely open (rendering me completely exposed) with my right upper and lower extremities dangling limply over the side of the exam table (crotch facing my gyno’s direct line of sight), with the nurse shoving smelling salts up my nose. They might have presented me with the Award for the Patient With The Most Theatrically Impressive Nude Syncopal Episode had I ever gone back to claim it. I didn’t. Ever.

For several years after that, just for the sake of convenience, I went to the gynecologist who my mother worked for as a nurse. At first, I thought it might not be the wisest idea, given that my mother would have easy access to my medical records. I was sure she wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to take a peak into my sex life. So I repeatedly assured Dr. Williams that when I went out hooking on Friday nights, and then on to my sex show at Whips, Chains & Trapezes on Saturday nights, I’d always use protection…he nodded, unphased, and noted it in my medical chart for her reading pleasure.

Then, I started residency. And, again, for the sake of convenience, I thought it best to just go see a gynecologist who worked in the clinic building adjacent to the hospital where I worked. That way, I could just pop over in between OR cases. This seemed like a good idea at the time. It ceased to be a good idea about six months after the appointment, when I was scrubbed in on a complicated colon cancer case. We called an intraoperative OB/GYN consult for some input on a rather suspicious looking ovarian lesion on the patient who’s colon cancer we were resecting. And who scrubs in but the very gyno who ventured down into my nether regions just six months before! This would have been fine, except he kept looking at me from across the OR table. After about five minutes of curious glances, he finally said, “You look extremely familiar…have I met you somewhere before?” My general surgery attending peered up from the fungating colonic lesion in his hands and, despite the mask over his mouth, I could see the smirk in his eyes. Likewise, I was fairly sure that my crimson face could be seen despite my mask. After a few seconds, during which I regained my composure, I looked at our consulting gynecologist and said, “Yeah, I think you gave my cervix a clean bill of health about six months ago. I'm flattered I was so memorable.”

So, that was the end of that! And last week, as I lay there on the exam table waiting for my new, and hopefully more tactful, gynecologist to walk in, I crossed my fingers in the hopes that the visit would go seamlessly, and in the very least, without a syncopal episode.

Then.

In walked perhaps the best looking gynecologist on the planet. Dark hair, dark skin, light eyes, chiseled face, medium/muscular build. NOT the middle aged, mormon, paternal dork with 9 children I was hoping for. For the love of crotches, this guy shouldn't BE a gynecologist, he should PLAY one on TV.

Me and my vagina just don’t have very good luck with gynecologists.

1. Wazoo – one of the many non-medical words for vagina that I consider an acceptable substitution. This one came from a friend of mine who, incidentally, is a gynecologist. His daughter had to stand up in front of her kindergarten class to say what her parents did for a living…when it was her turn, she stood up and said: “My mommy stays at home to take care of my sister while my daddy looks at bellies and wazoos all day long.” Needless to say, her dad had the most impressive profession out of all her classmates’ parents.

Sweet, sweet nothings via text message...

2007-04-21T07:25:00.001-07:00

The Brit’s away on business yet again…this time in Korea and China. Given his tendency to partake of the varied gastronomic wonders that are sold by street vendors (wonders like deep, fried, breaded bee larva and mystery meat product on a stick) it’s not surprising that the text message from him after his first night in Shanghai came with news of an entire night spent perched atop a toilet in a fecal meltdown.

I got to play doctor via text message and give him a few recommendations for medications. Mostly he needs to just stay hydrated. (And beer doesn’t count if you’re reading this, mi Gringito Lindo!!!) Then I told him that I love him and miss him and hope he feels better soon.

To which he replied:

As much as I like seeing new places, I would much rather be with you.

Then a little later:

Just took the bund tunnel. It was in that Chinese film we saw about a year ago. All psychedelic lights. Pretty cool. Poo getting a little more solid.

To which I replied:

Ahh...one of the many reasons I love you…you always say the right things! XOXO

Ohhh, dear Peter, you're mediocre but I love you...

2007-04-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

I was recently going through a stack of boxes searching for a particular Special Pan, my designated Cuban Flan Pan. Given my knack for organization, I found it right where anyone in their right mind would have put it…in the same box with an old set of markers (last used when I was approximately age 12) along with enough unopened orca-sized maxi pads to give the Hoover Dam a day off . Given my knack for labeling boxes only on their tops and my other knack for then stacking them on top of each other, (I’m knacky, what can I say) I had to go through several boxes before I found what I was looking for. This explains how I stumbled upon the long forgotten box filled with a 15-year-old Ziggy doll collection and an anthology of my old journals, some of which date back to 1989! It was all there…from the heartbreak of not being allowed to shave my legs right through to the torture of being, like, so…totally misunderstood! Imagine my glee upon uncovering this pubescent treasure! I was happier than a gonococcus setting up shop in a virgin vagina!

And thus, I welcome you to the first installment of Teenage Turmoil. Join me as I microdissect the hormonally charged, emotionally misguided, synaptic misfirings that I managed to jot down using barely legible pink ink and deliberately bubbly letters. Today, we shall look back on my 13 year old feelings regarding sex and a boy named Peter…

March 10, 1991

Dear Diary -

Just last Friday was Miss Legs For Miles’ birthday sleepover party and since we stayed up til 1:30 AM gossiping and listening to music, I learned a lot of things that night. One thing is Miss LFM likes this one kid named Kevin. He’s kind of perverted and he’s not all that cute but he sort of likes her – at least we think he does! I didn’t know until that night and it was kind of a surprise. Anyways, more on Kevin later.

Here we learn that apparently Miss Legs For Miles (who, incidentally, I am still very close friends with) (and who incidentally DOES have killer legs) (and who I, incidentally, resent slightly for that to this day) and I didn’t have very high standards. Kind of perverted?? Not that cute?? I mean, honestly, sounds like he could have picked his nose and eaten his boogers out by the tetherball courts and we still would have dug him.

I also found out some disgusting news about Tina and Mandy. Heidi was telling us that she went over to one of their houses and they were talking about they had had sex before! That is really gross. Miss LFM and I promised Heidi we wouldn’t say anything to them.

Ahh…it is here that we see the manifestations of my parents’ many chit chats about the importance of abstinence. (And by “chit chats” I mean “stern, scary ditto presentations with schematics.”) Considering the fact that not a day passed by that I wasn’t reminded of the fiery pits of hell that awaited me should I engage in the unforgivable act of premarital sex, I pretty much thought a penis was akin to Satan with one eye. I got over that a few short years later. Nevertheless, I must say, if I ever have a daughter, I think I will start teaching her all about Satan The Firebreathing Penis when she’s about three.

Ok, now I guess I could get back to Kevin now. Kevin is this boy who hangs around with this other boy named Peter. Peter is also perverted and slightly immature but he likes me.

Gosh. Doesn’t he sound dreamy? Sigh…

In fact he went out with Liz only to get closer to me.

Ok. We should clarify something right here. “Going Out” when we were in middle school meant: exchanging sidelong glances at each other in Ms. Kheuler’s class, hanging out by each others’ lockers during the lunch break, and generally just standing around in awkward silence, kicking pebbles and staring at everyone but each other. Sometimes the guy in the relationship would let the girl wear his jacket…you know, so that all the other boy puppies would know that this particular tree had been peed on. So, in other words, Peter let Liz wear his jacket for a while. They TOTALLY dated. It was serious.

He’s always staring at me in English, Math and Social Studies, the three classes I have with him. He’s not really that cute but he’s not terribly ugly. He’s got really cute ~~blue~~ green eyes.

I love this part. Again, aiming low! He’s SO “not terribly ugly” that I haven’t even looked at him long enough to know his true eye color. I’d actually written "blue" and then gone in later with a green pen and written “green” over it!

He’s told Lydia that he likes me. I like him but I don’t want to show it but I do in a way. I don’t because I’m always telling Miss LFM that he’s a jerk and that I can’t stand him. The reason why I sort of do want to show it is because Miss LFM told him that I don’t care about him liking me when he asked what I think of him. And I think that might ruin how he likes me!! What should I do?

Oh, the tortuous rapture that is teenage love! First, I didn’t really like him because he wasn’t “really that cute”…but then he beamed his baby ~~blues~~ greens over at me in English class and he, like, TOTALLY swept me off my feet. Dude, I’m half proud of the fact that I wasn’t all about looks, but half disappointed that I was that easy to win over at the unripened age of 13. (This noxious combination will prove to be to my detriment in future dating fiascos.)

Stay tuned for next week’s installment to see if I ~~get to wear this guy’s jacket~~ "go out" with this guy.

Senseless

2007-04-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes things happen that render you paralyzed with the horror of it all, speechless with its senselessness, dizzy with the Why of it, and nauseated with the thought that there may never be an answer. When things of this variety come wheeled in on a gurney through the hospital emergency room doors, I have endogenous adrenaline to help override the otherwise innate desire within me to make sense of the situation. When there is a patient with severe closed head injuries due to a high speed car crash and another patient next door with a pneumothorax, a long bone fracture and a blood alcohol level triple the legal limit, it simply doesn’t matter in the moment of their arrival that the drunk patient is the driver of the car that caused the accident. The only thing that matters is timely and appropriate care. That’s what I’ve been trained to do, and so I do it.

When things of this variety happen in a small community of which I am not directly affiliated…there is no adrenaline, there is nothing for me to busy myself with, and I am allowed to sit, in stunned silence, to take it all in…and to wish, like the students and faculty at Virginia Tech and like the rest of the country, that things like this didn’t happen.

If there’s anything I’ve come to appreciate in my line of work, it’s that life is fragile and tragically fickle…but the human soul and spirit can sometimes be unimaginably, outstandingly valiant and invincible. I just wish it didn’t take tragedies like this to make the world realize that.

Old habits are hard to break

2007-04-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

My cell phone rings. It’s Mamacusa.

“Hey Ma! What’s up?”

“Nada, I just wanted to thank you for the lovely package full of gifts from Japan!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!”

“Glad you like it! Were you surprised??”

“YES!”

“You like how that works?”

“Do I like how what works?”

“The surprise! See how much of a surprise it was when the surprisER doesn’t call the potential surprisEE beforehand to tell them to expect a surprise in the mail???”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I always ruin surprises. I can’t help it…I just get so excited!”

“I know. It’s fun to give presents.”

“Yeah, so anyway. When are you and The Brit coming up to see me next…I’ve got some GREAT presents for you…”

[pause]

“…I just did it again didn’t I?”

“Yep.”

Our growing compendium of incidents involving automotive retardation...

2007-04-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Heretofore, it was thought, even proclaimed!, that I was a bad driver. I think it bears documenting here and now, that I am not alone in my vehicular ineptitude.

The Brit, using the precision and exactness acquired from years of pulling out of the same driveway every morning for five years, recently managed to scrape and then yank the rear bumper off of Vinja’s car with the front end of his Mini.

This would be considered a momentary lapse in a previously impeccable driving record…except he’d, just months before, careened right into the driveway gate, thus successfully and permanently dislocating its several rusted joints.

Prior to that, he’d destroyed the front bumper of our rental car while pulling out of the carport of our lodge in Namibia.

Prior to that, he’d lurched headlong into a deer on the freeway.

I’m not saying I don’t deserve being mocked for cracking my driver’s side rearview mirror while pulling out of a parking garage or for denting the passenger side of my car with the driver’s side rearview mirror of another car while attempting to parallel park on a hill…but I’m just saying…

Take a bow with me, my dear Brit!

It’s a wonder either one of us manages to get out of the driveway most days.

The best of both worlds

2007-04-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

My usual week at the county hospital, a hospital I spend much of my time in as a surgical resident, involves a number of things that may seem overwhelming to one who might work a standard 9 to 5 office job (particularly when that office job rarely involves blood, pus or excrement of any kind). Things like…

…a work day that starts around 5 AM.
…a work day that ends anywhere from 5 PM that same day to noon the day after.¹
…an average of 80 hours a week at work and four days off a month.
…a fair amount of sleep deprivation due to that which is listed above
…an even fairer amount of blood, pus, excrement (and a myriad of other bodily fluids for that matter).
…at least once a week, no less than one categorically drunken, drugged-out patient either spitting at me or, equally as charming, calling me a bitch.²
…patient upon patient with bullet wound after bullet wound…with bullets that sometimes, oftentimes just by luck, have just grazed the skin…others that have penetrated through the sternum right into the left ventricle of the heart…still others that have miraculously managed to hit a rib anteriorly, ride it all the way posteriorly, and lodge themselves right by the spinal cord without any injury to any organ system whatsoever. Not surprisingly, the latter is the least common of the three listed scenarios. And sadly, there are infinitely more scenarios.
…swollen ankles from hours on end of standing in the operating room.
…ultimately, and what makes me do it, the satisfaction of diagnosing an operable disease, and performing the necessary procedure to take care of the patient (regardless of whether he or she spat at me or not). (And usually, even the spitters are grateful once the anesthesia has worn off.)

It goes without saying that the job is somewhat demanding. And after three solid years of working 80 hours a week, I was very much looking forward to the “break” that a stint of research would give me. Last July I signed on for a two-year leave from my usual clinical schedule to do breast cancer research. Cancer, for reasons near and dear to my heart, is something I’ve had an interest in helping abolish since early on in my medical education. Surgery can be an effective cure, and it’s certainly very satisfying when it is…but oftentimes it’s not. So looking for the reasons for this and finding ways to anticipate and prevent them, is very exciting to be a part of. The breast cancer research community as a whole, a community that spans the entire globe, is at a very pivotal point right now…and participating in it all is fulfilling in a way that is much different from my usual day at the hospital.

Plus! The added perks of a research job are things like…
…a work day that starts around 9 AM.
…a work day that ends anywhere from 5 PM to 7PM.
…an average of 40 hours a week, evenings and weekends off.
…a fair amount of sleep.
…absolutely no blood, pus, or excrement.
…a sheer lack of obscenities being screamed at me by patients
…no bullets
…ankles that do not protest when I attempt to zip up my boots!
…time to do other things…like visit friends and family, dance, and write this blog!

This is temporary…as I’ll go back to my usual clinical schedule in June of 2008. And I suspect that by then, I’ll be ready to jump back in to the chaos of it all. Afterall, I already miss working closely with individual patients and I certainly miss operating. And, sometimes, strangely enough, being screamed at, spit at, or called something profane at 3 AM by a perfect stranger, is more awakening than a stiff cup of coffee!

1. Yes, this means some of my shifts, usually around one to two a week, hover around 30 hours long.
2. To which I usually reply, “That’s ‘Dr. Bitch’ to you, Sir.”

In which even MY high standards of vulgarity are trumped...

2007-04-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

It’s not too often that I am NOT the most obnoxious person sitting at the dinner table, but I daresay I was recently, even if only temporarily, trumped…

…and by a Brit! Not The Brit of course, the pillar of politeness that he is, but A Brit nonetheless. I should have known that if anyone were going to make me spray a Napa Valley syrah through my nasal passages, it would be this particular Brit.

The Storyteller, one of The Brit’s close childhood friends (and, incidentally, the brother of one of my favorite bloggers), blows through town every so often on the wings of a Virgin. While mounted on said Virgin, he offers up the best “First Class Cart Tart” service (as he endearingly refers to it) at approximately 30,000 ft. While dismounted, and safely at or around sea level, he offers some of the best gay company on this end of SF (and by “gay” I mean both “merry” and “homosexual”). All of this simply goes to say that his brief visits don’t go a single minute without an entertaining story of some sort, all of which result in deep belly laughter and, ultimately, syrah through the nose. I should just stop taking sips when he begins to speak, really.

At dinner the other night, we stuffed ourselves silly with divine food and drink, all the while disturbing the peace with our raucous laughter. As per usual. Our dinner plates were cleared, just in time to spare me the embarrassment I would have suffered had I given in to my urges to lick up the remnants of my seared scallops and potato puree. Then, our attentive waiter handed us the dessert menu.

“Room for dessert?” the waiter asked.

The Storyteller’s response: “I doubt I could even fit so much as a cock in my mouth right now, no matter how much I might want to!”

I’m assuming the restaurant has stain remover for their white tablecloths.

Hope so.

The kinds of things I think about while jogging at the outdoor track...

2007-04-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Damn, I hate it when I forget my Ipod. It’s SO boring to run without musical accompaniment…

[several minutes of running in silence]

I don’t think you ready…for this jelly…I don’t think you ready…for this jelly…

Nope. Just not the same without Beyonce.

Ooh! That guy’s got a nice ass, lemme go run behind him.

[slowly but surely change lanes to the innermost lane behind Beautiful Butt Boy]

Crap. He runs too fast.

Before I know it, he’ll come up from behind me and be looking at MY ass.

Which would NOT be good.

As I’m fairly certain there’s a good amount of jiggling going on back there.

Which is WHY I’m running in the first place.

God, why did you have to make cheese so delicious?

So sinfully delicious??? You put crack in it, didn’t you?

[slowly but surely change lanes to the outer lane where I started out]

Mmmm. Cheese.

Ok. We’re here to focus.

Think about running….R-U-N-N-I-N-G.

Not smoked gouda.

Running.

Your ~~pear~~ ~~apple~~ smoked gouda butt is depending on it.

I don’t think you ready…for this jelly…

God, running is soooooooo boring.

Maybe if I pretend there’s a piece of cheese at the end of lap 5, I’ll get there fast--

OUCH! Diaphragm cramp!!

Friggin’ smoked gouda.

No shits, no giggles

2007-04-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Editors of the Fine Publication that recently published the article "Was Castro Good for Cuba?" -

I sincerely thank you for publishing this piece, as it raises a number of important issues. These issues, for reasons personal to me, my Cuban parents and my Cuban grandparents, will always be a topic of discussion around our dinner table. I am privileged to be among the first generation of our family born in the United States, and thus was able to approach the article with a bit more of an objective stance than the older members of my family. Even still, however, there were elements to the article which were difficult, if not absurdly impossible, to swallow.

Most glaringly, having a Spaniard defend the argument for "yes" introduced perhaps the single most damaging inaccuracy in the entire piece. While I can appreciate that a well-seasoned, widely read journalist and writer such as Ignacio Ramonet might be able to craft some intelligent reasons for such an argument after a few visits and so many hours of interviewing Castro, the argument for "yes" would have been far more powerful had it been made by a native Cuban who lives in Castro's Cuba today. At first I was puzzled by the choice of a non-Cuban author because, though freedom of speech and of the press are not amongst the liberties that the citizens of Cuba currently enjoy, I would imagine that Castro might make an exception for a press document that would eulogize him. I wasn't puzzled for long, though, as I realized that one would be hard-pressed to find a Cuban citizen, living among the economically and politically cachectic people of Cuba, who would sing the praises of a man who has allowed a once glorious country to crumble into heaps of rubble. Indeed, it is much easier to find someone who enjoys the liberties of a country in which he does not need to give up simple pleasures like toilet paper, steak, or the right to accumulate wealth. It is much easier to find someone who enjoys a medical system in which he does not need to keep the equivalent of $6 USD (which amounts to anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of one month's salary) stashed away for cab fair in the event of a medical emergency because one cannot depend on an ambulance. Yes, much easier to bring in Ignacio Ramonet…a Spanish author who does not even see the irony in the question that he, himself, posed in reference to all of the pro bono cataract surgery that Cuban surgeons are offering to the poor of other Latin American countries: Is seeing one's children and the landscape of one's homeland not a fundamental human right?? Yes, Mr. Ramonet, it is. However, Cubans don't get to enjoy that right as they do not have a functional, much less a comfortable, transportation system in which to tour around their homeland. And even if they did, they couldn't afford to use it. And even if they could afford it, they're not allowed to stay in their own country's hotels, eat in their own country's restaurants, or bathe in some of their own country's beaches. So, while Cuban infants may indeed benefit from a lower infant mortality rate, the trade-off is surviving to live a restricted, albeit educated, life on an inescapable prison island. To support this political and economic system, and furthermore, to argue that Castro has the support of the majority, requires all the intention and focused energy of a toddler who, in the throws of a temper tantrum, has his eyes clenched shut and his fingers jammed snugly into each external ear while humming loudly. Only then can the reality be sufficiently drowned out. It is frankly disappointing that an intelligent man like Mr. Ramonet subscribed to such techniques to arrive at his conclusions.

Despite the fact that the harsh realities of life in Cuba precluded the ability to find a Cuban author for the "yes" argument, the discussion did not suffer from a lack of impassioned opinions. It was a lively discussion, each author having facts and statistics of questionable validity to support his argument. As a physician who knows full well that one can scour the medical literature to find data and statistical evidence to back directly opposing treatment options for the very same medical malady, it is with a grain of salt that I take in each side's supporting arguments. However, no matter how many political prisoners and extrajudicial murders there have been or have not been, no matter how many uprisings have occurred or not occurred, no matter how much Cuba's average annual gross domestic product has grown or not grown…there are at least a few simple truths, all of which rise above the distraction created by the data-wielding on each side of the argument, to suggest that when all is said and done, Castro has NOT been good for Cuba.

And those simple truths are as follows:

Castro assumed power four decades ago by means of violence, and has since never offered the people of Cuba an alternative option for leadership by any other party or any other leader.

The people of Cuba want change. They want change so desperately, that thousands and thousands have risked, and continue to risk, their lives to escape to a better place.

This is hardly a legacy to be proud of.

And so we wait. Here in the States and, surely, in Cuba, we wait and we hope for a truly "Cuba Libre.”

Sincerely,
LCG

Just for shits & giggles...

2007-04-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

For the five of you who follow along here semi-regularly, you know by now that I love a good laugh. And, considering that I don’t mind when that laugh comes at even my own expense, it certainly doesn’t bother me when an appropriate opportunity presents itself to laugh at the expense of someone else. Especially when that someone else is our country’s ~~fearless~~ fearful leader.

So, with that, I give you this:

George Bush slips and breaks his neck, back, leg…

It went around via the email circuit last year some time (it's also a very popular screen saver, apparently), but I dug it up after his most recent impromptu press conference to have a go at him. I’ve ~~wasted~~ spent so much time enjoying this…mostly because when he gets stuck, you can use your cursor to pick him up and fling him around or drag him through impossible crevices…it’s just gool ol’ fashioned fun! Enjoy, if you haven’t already. (And even if you have, it’s just as fun the second, third, fourth… time around.)

The definition of High Maintenance

2007-04-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

I went with Dochechka to pick her Mamichki up from the airport last night. Afterwards, the three of us went to dinner. What ensued is not at all atypical of an evening out with Mamichki. She’s like a second mother to me, so I mean this in a very loving way: Mamichki can be a royal pain. And if Dochechka ever gets a bit grumpy or indecisive, I just remember that she got half her chromosomal matter and all of her mitochondrial matter from this woman…

Mamichki looked fleetingly at the menu and then tossed it over by Dochechka, “You peek for me. I dun’t know vhat I vant.”

“Ok. Well, what do you feel like?”

“I dun’t know. You peek.”

“Ok. You want the duck?”

“No.”

“You want the Ahi Tuna?”

“No. I don’t vant ze fish.”

“Okaayyyy. The Shrimp?”

“NO! I don’t vant ze FISH! I had big fish vhen I was in ze Spain…you cean’t even imagine how big! No fish!”

“Well, shrimp isn’t really fish, but ok. How about the chicken?”

“Fine. I vill have ze shrimp.”

“Are you sure? Is that what you want?”

“No. I dun't know.”

“Well, Mamichki, why don’t you look at the menu and pick something out for yourself.”

Without looking at the menu, “Fine. I vill have ze chicken.”

“Good. Ok.”

Mumbling under her breath, “But I dun’t really vant ze chicken…”

“Mamichki, just look at the menu!”

“No! You peek for me!! Why you don’t order me same sing as vhat you get?”

“Because I’m having the tuna.”

“I don’t VANT FISH!”

“I KNOW!”

Blissfully unaware the potential peril of entering the conversation, the waiter arrived, “Are you all just about ready for me to take your order?”

“Yes," I said. "She’ll have the duck."

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

2007-04-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

If you’d have told me back in high school that one of the best dates I’d ever go on would involve a protractor and the actual exercise of measuring out precise angles, I’d have peered at you from underneath my near unibrow, rolled my eyes at you (which you might have missed…my eyebrows were that unruly), and then said something classically indecipherable in a way that was, like, sooo totally pubescent. Something along the lines of: “Pffft.” This is Teenagerspeak for: “Not only are you out of your friggin’ mind, but you’ve probably never heard of Color Me Badd, both of which mean you have no idea what cool is. Take your protractor and shove it.”

And yet. This is exactly true. The Brit, in a way that is so endearingly engineering-y, gathered a moon chart, a protractor, and a google map of the city of SF and figured out the exact path that the full moon would take when it rose the other night. This explains the sunset drive over the Golden Gate Bridge…the ascent through the gorgeous hills of the Marin Headlands nestled just behind the bridge…the staking out of The Perfect Spot to set up the camera and tripod…the waiting, waiting, waiting for twilight…the last minute scramble a little further up the hill to reposition the camera (our math had been a little off) …and last but not least…

This…
Suck on THAT, teenage version of me! (And for the record, you really should have done something about those brows back then.) Who’s cool now, eh? (Hint: It's NOT Color Me Badd)

*Many thanks to The Brit for letting me display his lovely pictures!

Paying it forward

2007-04-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

The lovely, superbly extraordinary Catherine…who wreaks the best kind of written havoc that can be wreaked over On the Banks of the Rio Grande…the kind that makes you feel like you should go out and wreak some actual havoc of your own…has awarded me a Thinking Blogger Award. Wow!!! Thanks Catherine! Truly, I’m flattered and honored! Woo hoo!

Wait. I think I am!?! It occurred to me, upon receipt of this award, that I had no idea what I’d just been awarded. This got me thinking…Does it mean I make my 5 readers think as I blog? Or does it actually signify a subtle hint that I should think before I blog? God, I hope it’s not the latter, because I rather enjoy posting about depthless, hollow things like clitoral stimulation during childbirth or like how my boyfriend is slowly trying to kill me with lethal auditory doses of movie scores and soundtracks. I’m thinking Catherine probably meant more of the former…mostly because I know that deep down, she truly enjoys my content. And by “content”, I mean “boobs.” (Which I’d like to go on the record and say that I am A-OKAY with. Stare all you like, folks. That’s what they’re there for.)

Regardless of what it really all means, I’ll happily make a list of five bloggers who I like and who make me think (or, alternatively, who make laugh so hard that I sometimes momentarily lose urethral sphincter control and wet myself just a little). (Both are equally admirable accomplishments in my mind.) So, here goes:

Nicki in Positano – Her brother, who is one of The Brit’s oldest pals, sent me the link to her blog late last year. Through her candid tails of love, loss, motherhood, and life in Positano…she invited me in, not only to her world, but to the world of blogging. I have yet to meet her, but judging by her blog and her brother (who is an absolute riot), she’s got to be a real scream!

Waspgoddess in England– This sassy lassy is the first official blog-amiga I made. I like to think we’re homies that go way back now. She’s one of my blog-peeps. She’s funny, witty, and thoughtful. Her writing spans from the whimsical and silly to the tear-jerking and philosophical. She’s been a real gem to get to know!

Mr. Poopie in DC – Now THIS guy is one of my actual peeps with whom I really do go waaaaaaaay back…back to the pimply, bushy eye-browed days of high school. He’s probably one of the funniest guys I know, and perhaps one of the ONLY people I know who is decidedly more obnoxious than me. Be sure to do some Kegel exercises to strengthen your urethral sphincter (or at least get yourself some Depends) before you head on over to this guy’s blog. He’ll surely make you wee.

Mist in the Dirty South – Another blog-amiga made via the series of tubes that is the internet as we know it. I first stumbled upon her blog when she’d just written "Indoor kids" on March 8th of this year (do you not have permalinks woman??), which JUST about killed me. No seriously. I was drinking really hot coffee when she made me snort with laughter. (Ouch, by the way.) After my 2^nddegree nasal mucosal burns healed, I was left with the scars of deep, devoted blog-love. She’s frank, she’s vulgar, she’s divine.

Jay in Canada – I happen to know she’s already received one of these, but there’s nothing in any made-up rule book that says I can’t give her one all over again. I found this gem of a goat killer because she was one of the privileged few to get nominated for this prestigious award. She’s fantastically witty, highly entertaining, and full of goaty goodness. (Which, incidentally, is an essential part of a well-balanced breakfast.)

So there are my favorite thinkers and jokers. (I’ll leave it up to y’all whether to pass on the award or not.) Thanks again, Catherine…I’m so happy to count you amongst my few new blog-world friends!! And thanks to all of you who share your world with me!

Evidence that I've been hanging out with The Brit for far too long...

2007-04-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

The Brit and I had a weekend getaway this past weekend. In celebration of the fact that this was the first time we’d both be in the same place for two consecutive weekend days since we were in Japan together, we decided to head down the coast four hours to the town of San Simeon. It’s a small coastal town just north of Cambria (which is, incidentally, a waaaay cuter coastal town), just west of Paso Robles (where there is wine tasting that rivals that of Napa & Sonoma), and just minutes away from Hearst Castle (where I’d never been). Yep. We had BIG plans. Plans involving sleeping for shameful amounts of time and then hanging around in bed until we absolutely had to go out (probably when one of us got hungry). With the exception of one to two hours which we’d planned to relegate to eating and wine tasting, the goal was basically to see how much we could accomplish in our underwear. (And if wine tasting were an experience that could be delivered via room service, I daresay we’d have ordered it. That’s how serious we were about this goal.)

We set out for the four-hour drive a bit later than planned on Friday evening. And nearly the entire drive down, The Brit tortured me with his “most frequently played” list on his Ipod (for which his car “conveniently” has a plug-in). Now, if you know this much about The Brit, then you know what I mean by torture.

What actually transpired is still a bit hazy, but I believe that after about two solid hours of movie score after movie soundtrack (most of which was John Williams’ ET, Star Wars, Indiana Jones…) I finally had a grand mal seizure and then remained in a dazed post-ictal state for the rest of the trip down. When we finally got to the hotel in San Simeon, it was almost midnight and some good, solid sleep (sans Ipod) was much needed.

We hit the sack and a few brief, blissfully silent moments later, our next-door neighbors turned on their TV (to a volume of 11 on a scale of 10) and then proceeded to go at it like a couple of sweaty baboons in heat…

“Grunt!! Grunt!! GRUNNNNNNNT!!!!!!!!!” he’d grunt.

“Shriek!! Shriek!! SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!!!!!!!!!” she’d shriek.

“Blare!! Blare!! BLAAAAAAAAAAAARE!!!!!!!” the TV would blare.

“GRUNT!”

“SHRIEK!!”

“BLARE!!!”

“GRUNT!!!!”

“SHRIEEEEEEEEK!!!!! Shriek! Shrie—”

“BLARE!!!!!”

“Grunt!!!! GODDAMMIT, GRUUUUUUUNNNNNNNTTT!!”

“Shriek!!!! OHMYGOD, SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!!!”

“BLAAAAAAAAAAAARE!!!!!”

This went on. And on. And on. But it only took a few minutes of listening to this pornographic symphony to put my finger on exactly what we were listening to. I was sure of it.

“Hey, Brit, isn’t that The Last of the Mohicans they’re watching?”

Mama's got a brand new rack, part deux

2007-03-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

Below is a photograph of the sweet rolls that Mr. Poopie mentioned in his post about our brief visit during my stay in the DC area earlier this week. I thought you might want to see them. The sweet rolls. Of course.

Don’t they look delicious?

The sort of thing he does while he's out visiting the wonders of the world without me...

2007-03-29T07:00:00.001-07:00

Aside from having his testicles temporarily jump back into the inguinal canals from which they originally descended, I don't think he's suffered any long-term consequences.

That doesn't make him any less crazy though.

In which I demonstrate what I am still capable of despite a $200,000+ education

2007-03-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

My aunt, Tia, was gracious enough to drive me to Dulles airport after my meeting concluded on Tuesday afternoon. She skillfully bypassed all the evening traffic by driving via the Dulles Toll Way, a blocked off, two lane expressway that goes directly from DC to Dulles airport with multiple ways to get on, but no way to get off until you’ve reached the airport. The same toll way exists going the opposite direction, from Dulles to DC. I was contemplating how brilliant the concept of this toll way was when we arrived at the airport a full two hours and fifteen minutes before my flight. I grabbed all my bags, kissed my Tia goodbye, waved to her as she pulled away from the curb, and then sauntered right up to the check-in counter to get my ticket and check my suitcase. Never before was I so early and prepared for a flight, I thought with a smidge of self-satisfaction.

At the counter, I reached for my wallet to get my ID. This is when I realized there was a slight problem: I didn’t have my purse. I had my two carry-on bags and my suitcase, but NO PURSE. At that moment, a clear vision of my purse deserted on the floor mat of the front passenger side of my aunt’s car came to me. Not a problem, I'll just call her.

No I won't. My phone is in my purse along with my wallet. Twit!

I ran out to the curb thinking that she’d see my purse in her car and immediately loop around to drop it off. She'll loop right around and we'll have a good chuckle about this whole silly thing...

Five minutes later, there was still no sign of her. She must not have noticed my purse. Ok. Plan B. Find someone with a cell phone.

I did this. A lovely woman, likely with advanced stage emphysema judging by the way she was lighting each cigarette from the end of the last, gladly handed me her phone after I explained my predicament. This is when I realized there was another slight problem: I didn’t know Tia’s number. Or anyone else’s for that matter. I hadn’t memorized a phone number since I got my cell phone several years ago. Shit! I stared at the number keys on Smokey the Bear’s cell phone, willing someone’s…anyone’s phone number to come to me. In these painfully slow moments seemingly devoid of even the smallest number of successfully firing neurons inside my cranium, I began by trying a number that I thought might be The Brit’s. Didn’t work. Ohhh...wait. He has a different area code. I tried the same number with a different area code. The phone rang. And rang. And went straight to voice mail. On the other end of the phone was The Brit’s recorded voice nonchalantly telling me to leave a message. I called again. This time he picked up. Call Mamacusa and have Mamacusa call Tia to tell Tia to come back to the airport because my purse is still in her car. Tell her to tell Tia I'll wait right where she dropped me off. And with that he was off to do his assigned task.

I sat out by the curb and waited. It was a strange feeling of disconnectedness, being without any money, my ID, or my phone. Minutes crept by. People kept streaming into the airport and all of them seemed to have cell phones and wallets…sometimes multiples of both plainly visible. I stared at them like a starving child in one of those Children’s Fund commercials. Tia was taking a really long time. The wind picked up. It started getting dark. She probably took the toll way all the way back to DC...and with no way to get off, she probably hasn't even turned around yet. Suddenly the toll way didn't seem like such a brilliant concept anymore. I mean, who builds a toll way that you can't get off of, anyway???

After about thirty minutes of waiting, I decided I would politely ask the airport employee who’d been sitting behind me, gabbing loudly into her phone for the last 20 minutes about what a slut Lashonda was for trying to steal her man, if I could use her phone. I explained my predicament to her. She looked up at me completely disinterested and said, “I don’t have anymore free minutes." Riiiiiiight!

I didn’t want to take the chance of going inside to make the call because, with my luck, that was the exact moment Tia would arrive. So I searched for others along the curb who looked like they might be helpful. The problem was, it was the departures area, so everyone who was pulling up to the curb was in a terrible hurry to get inside. Ahh! Over there! Another smoker! (I’d like to take this time to point out that it was the smokers that really came through for me in this difficult time. Thanks guys, I’ll never take you for granted ever again!!)

Smokey the Bear 2 was happy to lend me her phone for as long as her cigarette lasted. I called The Brit. No answer. Called him again. No answer. STB2 took her lips off her cigarette long enough to tell me I should try my cell phone. Why didn’t I think of that??? I dialed my number, more than a bit miffed that I hadn’t come up with that idea myself. No answer. Shit ,I must have left my phone on silent after the conference ended. I tried The Brit’s phone one more time. This time he answered, gave me Tia’s cell number just in case, and assured me that Mamacusa had reached Tia and that she was on her way back.

So I waited, all the while congratulating myself for ascending to the rank of First Class Idiot. And then mumbling to myself about how I was still going to have to sit in economy class anyway.

An hour and ten minutes after she dropped me off, Tia reappeared. I chuckled as she pulled up to the curb. Thank GOODness we’d initially arrived with so much time before my flight, I still had plenty of time to make it. I opened the passenger side door to her car to reach for my purse. This is when I realized there was yet another slight problem: my purse was not there.

It wasn’t in the front side passenger seat area.

Or the back seat passenger area.

Or in the trunk.

(Or on her roof for that matter.)

Turns out, my purse was on Tia’s desk. In her apartment. All the way back over by DC.

Needless to say, I missed my flight last night. After sleeping with my purse duck taped to my person so as not to forget it, I got onto a flight this morning. And though the plane reeked of a strange blend of over-roasted coffee beans and stale cat urine, I was just happy to have made my flight.

I am so wicked smart.

Catching up with my cousin...

2007-03-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

I hadn't seen Busubelly in almost 10 years and I must say...she's grown up to be a lovely 23-year-old woman. A few months away from graduating from college, she's a very talented artist full of ambition, energy, and big, big dreams. Oh, and the occasional bad dream...

"I keep having this recurring nightmare in which all my teeth fall out and then suddenly, I'm surrounded by hundreds of little midgets serving me huge bowls of chocolate pudding," she tells me over dinner Saturday night.

I envision this "nightmare" of hers. For a few long, luxurious moments. "Sounds like a dream come true to me!"

Mama's got a brand new rack

2007-03-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

As mentioned previously, Tulip recently introduced me to a non-invasive, non-surgical method of breast enhancement. After much anticipation, I’m happy to announce that my new boobs came in the mail today.*

I must say, although I do run the moderate risk of poking one of my own eyes out (as demonstrated by Bustie McMammaries to our right here), they look great! As ~~we speak~~ I type, all things are lifted, supported, and pushed in all the right places. And suddenly, what was once questionably appreciable is now significant enough to set my beer on. Which is handy. Usually I just set it on my rump. So this makes things a lot more accessible.

And just in time for my trip to the DC area. I’m off for a weekend of gallivanting with the likes of Mr. Poopie, Cunning Mama, and some of my favorite aunts and cousins. All of this is to be followed up by a highly academinc meeting early next week with all of the great minds of breast cancer research. Me and my new boobs plan to enjoy ourselves thoroughly. And tastefully. Of course.

* I had to special order them because bras for boobs as small as mine are not commonly found in traditional lingerie stores. (Shut up.)

Warning: Annoying when hungry

2007-03-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

I walk into Dochechka’s apartment to find her in a partial state of readiness for our lunch date. I perch myself just outside her bathroom door so I can moan, rub my empty belly and give her my best pouty hungry face.

“I’m almost ready, I swear. Just give me a few secs,” she says as she takes a blowdryer to the last few locks of her wet hair.

[Sigh heavily.] [Roll eyes.] “GAWD. You’ve had FORTY FIVE MINUTES to get ready!”

“I know, sorry. I’m running a little late.”

Moments pass. More hair is blowdried. Then, hair is curling ironed. Hairsprayed. Still more hair is curling ironed. Repositioned. Curling ironed again…

“You wanna know what I think? I think your hair looks hungry. I think it could really use a tuna melt sandwich right about now.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Look at it. It’s crying out for nourishment!”

“Okay, okay. But, really quick…” she runs into her room and emerges in a different shirt, “Do you think this shirt goes better with this sweater?”

“You wanna know my honest opinion?”

“Yeah.”

“I think either shirt will go with the sweater at this point because your sweater wants a tuna melt so damn bad it doesn’t even CARE what shirt you wear with it.”

“Fine. Let me just put on a matching necklace.”

“You wanna know which necklace I think you should wear?”

“The one that wants a tuna melt sandwich?”

“Damn straight.”

“Have I mentioned how annoying you are?”

“Have I mentioned how bad I want a tuna melt sandwich?”

His love for me, professed in more than one language...

2007-03-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

The Brit recently came back from a two-week trip to South Africa. The night he arrived, we lay in bed, spooning, chatting before drifting off to sleep.

“I really wish you could have come on this trip with me.”

“I would have loved to, you know that.”

“I missed you.”

These sentimental words were followed immediately thereafter by a loud, staccato, multi-syllabic noise trumpeted from his back end. (Thankfully, I was the spoonee, not the spooner.) Within seconds the putrid, enterically-altered smell of whatever airline food he’d eaten over the last 24 hours managed to escape from under the sheets and collide head-on into my olfactory sensors.

“Golly…I missed you too, babe.”

I can't wait to have babies

2007-03-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

There are pregnant women all around me. The downside of this is that the bathrooms are always occupied…bladders the size of walnuts, these women have. The upside is that I look egoliciously slender in comparison. I can dig it. Too bad the human gestation period is only 9 months, I could really get used to this.

The other upside is that I get to learn from the choices that these women with child are making. Exhibit A: Prenatal Yoga. One of the first-time preggers that I know, Ms. Touch My Belly And I’ll Cut You, decided to step outside of her non-maternal, pragmatic box and try pre-natal yoga. Since making that decision, she’s spent every moment trying to get back into her box. It’s not that she can’t get into the yoga so much as she can’t get into the 30 minute segment preceding the yoga in which all the preggers in attendance sit in a circle to eat organic, vegan granola, watch their armpit hair grow, and talk about their feelings (particularly their feelings on their opinion that women who want epidurals are pussies).

Ms. Touch My Belly And I’ll Cut You called me up one afternoon to tell me about a particularly hairy session in which everyone in the circle had to discuss her birthing plan. This, for those of you who don’t know, is where you get to make a list of all the things you do and do not want going on during your laboring, ie:

- I would like to have an enema before pushing the baby out so that my child is not delivered into the curry I ate last night
- There is to be no medical student of any variety allowed anywhere near my snatch
- If, so help me GOD, anyone tries to comfort me with Kenny G, I will perform my OWN episiotomy to expedite things

…so on and so forth. Anyway, Ms. TMBAICY relayed that one of her classmates, Mrs. Clit, described a technique that really helped make the delivery of her first child sooo much more relaxing and “personal.” Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Clit wanted the birth of their child “to be as intimate as the conception.” So, to facilitate this, during labor, Mr. Clit stimulated Mrs. Clit’s clit!! Just in case you missed that: HE STIMULATED HER CLITORIS DURING LABOR!!

Jesus, you can’t MAKE this stuff up!

All I ~~have to~~ will say, is that if Mrs. Clit was able to have this wish from her birthing plan fulfilled, I should have no problem getting unlimited crackers and pasteurized cheese in between my epidurally-attenuated contractions. And I will proudly proclaim this to my fellow pre-natal yoga classmates in between taking bites of my ham and cheese omelet and flashing them my freshly shaved armpits.

(Hopefully not anytime soon though.)

Daddio moves his rook forward

2007-03-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Communication, or rather effective communication, was not something I learned in my childhood home. My father was always a man of few, usually authoritative, words. And my mother was always a woman of many, oftentimes sarcastic, words. There was always love, in abundant heaps and piles, and there was always humor, by the truckloads, but there was rarely a successful conversation about what was ever really going on or about what anyone ever really felt. Luckily, I’ve had many patient friends and boyfriends in my nearly thirty years. I’ve learned through trial and error. And I like to think that because of it all, I’m fairly capable of having a functional conversation about things that matter. I judge this mostly by the success I have in discussions with The Brit, though I think the fact that he is entirely too reasonable has a lot to do with it.

As a family though, we’ve spent the years since the divorce of my parents fumbling through the difficult conversations that carried us through the pain of a broken, over two decade old family, and beyond to better times. We’ve all grown up, together. With Mamacusa, once we peeled away the layers of a deeply seated Hispanic temperament, sarcasm, and conclusions too quickly jumped to, talking became easier. I’m happy to credit Mamacusa with this as she found herself someone to practice with when she set her all-too-determined sights on The Love Muscle. Not only is TLM lovely to my mother but he’s fully capable of stringing together a series of well-formed words to create a meaningful sentence. Often many at a time. So she and he communicate very well together…and likewise, so do she and I.

With my father, things have always been a bit more challenging. Which is not to say that he is not capable of stringing together a series of well-formed words to create meaningful sentences; it’s just that he doesn’t seem to do this out loud. In his writing, he does it quite eloquently. But face to face, there are often long pauses, intermixed with some sputtering, a funny joke or two, maybe even a prank, and then an entirely prosaic question about something like how my car is running and when the last time was that I took it in for an oil change.

We’ve each made our moves to open up the lines of communication. I made mine first and I will never forget the visceral fear persistalsing though my GI tract as I ventured into then unknown territory. Several years ago, he and I were sitting in my truck after a brunch where I’d tried my hardest to muster up the courage to broach the topic of what seemed painfully obvious to me to be a decaying marriage between him and my mom. I’d failed abysmally and succeeded, instead, at stuffing myself nervously with sugared French toast. We’d gotten all the way back home and were parked outside of the apartment about to go back in. His hand reached for the door handle. In a panicked verbal spasm, I blurted out that I noticed he and mom weren’t sleeping in the same room anymore. He froze, hand on the door handle, and stared straight ahead. I was struck simultaneously with fear and relief. Too late to back out, I proceeded forward. Scared that I’d lose my nerve, I let words, the order and sense of which I do not recollect, fall out of my mouth…words that relayed that I didn’t think they seemed happy anymore…that I wanted for them to be happy…but that if they couldn’t figure out a way to be happy together, then maybe they should be happy apart…that there was no more use for “staying together for the kids”…we weren’t kids anymore. When I ran out of things to say, I held my breath and waited. Slowly, he turned his gaze away from my truck’s bug-splattered windshield and looked at me straight in the eyes. He looked at me almost as if he’d never seen me before. He said, “I had no idea you’d feel that way…so...mature about it.” There was surprise there. In his eyes and in my mind, I think I became an adult that day. An adult who didn’t necessarily need discipline anymore, but who could be confided in (and who, apparently, could also be trusted to eat an entire stack of French toast). We’d crossed a threshold that day, he and I. Suddenly, it was ok to talk about the difficult things. Not easier, or any less awkward, but ok.

The years since have been a series of chess moves, all made with the earnest intention to really get to know one another but always with a bit of nervous apprehension. Neither one of us wants to push too hard or intrude too much. But the recent announcement of his upcoming wedding came with a fresh new set of blanks to fill in. And behind the shelter of the written word, in emails and letters, we’ve made moves to do this. Today, though, he made the nearly two hour drive up to see me and spend the day with me. We talked about his wedding, his brothers, Cuba, my work, The Brit’s travels…it all gets more comfortable each time. For old time’s sake, we also watched a movie…an activity we did so often in my childhood that I might be able to blame it almost entirely for the fact that I have a rather large ass. (Well, that and the French toast.)

When it was time for him to go, I was half expecting him to reach in for a hug and slip in a wedgie or a wet willy…or worse, for him to pull his favorite prank: running his index finger along the underside of my nose and saying, “Guess where my finger’s been?” But no. There was just a hug and a kiss goodbye. And thank goodness for that, because Lord only knows where his finger’s been!

Good move, Dad.

The Curious Incident of the Poo in the Daytime

2007-03-16T17:36:00.001-07:00

Normally, I work at a crazy county hospital where there seems to be no limit to the strange things I see, both in and out of the operating room (and in and out of the bathrooms for that matter).

But since last July, I have been (and will be until July 2008) working in a comprehensive cancer center, with adults (no pets, no children, no mythical creatures with uncontrollable diarrhea), who are (so I thought) pottie trained. So, you’ll understand my confusion (and my intrigue) when I went to use the bathroom today (for a numero uno, if you must know) and found a roughly quarter-cup sized pile of poo in the center of the blue tiled floor. It was so neatly placed there, it seemed deliberate…almost like someone came by with a soft-serve poo machine and squeezed out a little dollup right there. The only thing missing was a garnish…like a sprig of mint or a drizzle of raspberry syrup or something.

Strange. Curious. Provocative.

Cinco cosas

2007-03-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

Five things you didn’t know about me that you didn’t ask about but that I have been forced against my will to expose…

1. I don’t mind telling people things about myself that they didn’t already know. In fact, I often tell people things about myself that they did already know…repeatedly, and far more elaborately and exaggeratedly than the first time. (Or the second time.) It’s a latin story telling thing. It explains how my grandfather managed to spawn five children with his foot-long penis while trekking uphill barefoot in the snow to work. In Cuba. (Ours is a particularly robust family line.)

2. Despite the fact that the idealist in me is shrinking with age, I still believe in the power that a single person has to make a huge difference….and that if everyone believed this, particularly if everyone believed that they themselves could make a huge difference, the world would be a much better place. And in this better world, I think the first things that would be made law would be midday siestas and free chocolate for everyone without an allergy. It could be so beautiful.

3. I pick my cuticles too much. Especially when I’m nervous. And when The Brit gently smacks my hands to get me to stop, my hands find a nice quiet place out of sight so that I can keep picking my cuticles. It’s my only vice. (Other than swearing like a drunken sailor, scratching my crotch unabashedly in public, eating too much cheese, and farting at will. Though, those last two I list amongst my many talents as well.) (Just kidding.) (Not really.)

4. I’m not afraid of heights. In fact, I enjoy them…and for the same reasons that I enjoy traveling and blogging: because all three are usually associated with a really great view of something other than the small space that I occupy. A view reminds me that there is more to life than my obnoxiousness, my many “talents”, or my surgical profession…and that there are many more stories out there than just those involving my particularly virile grandfather.

5. One of my favorite quotes is that of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” I’m sure she didn’t intend for me to abuse her words by using them to justify the vices described in the latter part of #3, but alas, I hope to someday make history in other, more meaningful ways.^*

Thanks, Waspgoddess, for the tagging! And with that, I tag Mr. Poopie next. Poops, the baton is ALL yours! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do with it!

* Like figuring out how to make midday siestas and free chocolate international mandates.

Top 10 Reasons Why Tulip Needs to Come Back to San Francisco PRONTO!

2007-03-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

1) There’s still a little chocolate ice cream left at Ghirardelli Square and I am ~~simply not capable of~~, ~~absolutely not going to~~, ~~largely unwilling to~~, probably not going to eat it all myself.

2) She left her sunglasses in my room. She needs to come pick those up.

3) SF’s foggy now. It was sunny when she was here. You do the math. Or the weather. Whatever.

4) She still has to sign my high school senior yearbook. (She was apparently too popular to sign it 12 years ago.)

5) I took her to Fisherman’s Wharf, despite the fact that she asked to be taken to see Fisherman’s Dwarf. We still have to find that dwarf.

6) There’s a straight, single man, somewhere in SF, with her name all over him. We just need to find him. And that might take a while.

7) Anyone who can help me find a bra that makes my A cups look like C cups should DEFINITELY live in the same city as me. Tulip, you need to move here and we need to get to work on finding pants that make my Size 8 ass look like a Size 4. Apurate, coño!

8) Tulip took to Afrobrasilian Dance like she’d been doing it for two weeks straight. There are no Afrobrasilian dance classes in Orlando. Only in SF. Well, and Brasil, but they have a way higher crime rate than we do.

9) It just doesn’t seem fitting that such a great trip had a grand finale involving a cramped airplane seat in which space was diminished even further by a gargantuan woman who snored and drooled the entire flight back to Orlando.

10) I miss her already. :(

Oh...and 11) There are waaaaaay more tulips in SF than in Orlando.

Dear San Francisco,

2007-03-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

Listen, honey. You know I love you. I love your look (LOVE the hair…AND the shoes), I love what you can whip up in the kitchen on command, I love your cultural diversity, I love that you warm up in October when everyone else starts getting chilly, and perhaps most of all, I love your almost histrionic need to entertain. I have you to thank, afterall, for introducing me to the great MaN donna. And you know that I not only accept, but embrace, your homosexuality. I hope that someday when you grow up, and when marriage between two gay cities is regarded as a legal union, that you find someone nice to settle down with. Like Marin…he might be good for you. A little uppity, I know, but he’s got a good heart. (And a nice ass, even if it is in khakis.)

Anyway, I just wanted to have a small word with you about something, because, you see, we have a visitor from out of town arriving tonight. Her name is Tulip. She’s a good friend of mine from my high school days in Panama and she’ll be here through Tuesday. The fact that she and I haven’t seen each other in nearly 12 years coupled with the fact that she’s never even met you before makes me eager to be sure that we both leave a good impression. I know I’ll probably do okay because, since high school, I’ve discovered that tweezers exist. So those pesky, unruly eyebrows that she probably found highly offensive back then are now tame and shapely…not too thin, but not meandering up my forehead either. (And I know you helped me with those, so thanks.) But you…well, I have to admit, I’m a little worried about the impression you’ll leave her with.

No, don’t worry. It’s not those cute little bright yellow hotpants you like to wear. Those are fine. (And in fact, if you could keep those on and your Coit Tower tucked in for the duration of the four-day weekend, that’d be great.) It’s actually your foggy security blanket that I want to chat with you about. Listen, I know you’re attached to it. I know it makes you feel secure and safe when you scamper and saché about town. But you’re almost an adult now. I know your mayor doesn’t act like one (and he certainly doesn’t seem to like dating them) but that doesn’t mean that you can’t lead by example. Be a leader, not a follower. That’s what my Mamacusa used to tell me. So, do you think you could do that for me? Lose the foggy blanky? Yeah, I think you can. Besides, how else are we going to see those beautiful bridges, beaches and parks of yours if you’re hiding behind a foggy blanky, huh? Huh? [Squeezing SF’s cheek affectionately.] That a boy.

Oh, and one more thing. At times, you can be quite cold. You don’t need to have your guard up with Tulip, she’s cool with the whole Gay Thing. Afterall, she comes from a place in Florida where Tinkerbell and Cinderella are very highly regarded and dwarfs dressed in rainbow colors parade around in the streets. So, feel free to warm up to her early. And if you’re inclined to put on your yellow hotpants for her and do a few twirls in the living room, that’s fine too. Just be a dear and fix us a few drinks first, ok?

Love & kisses,
La Cubana Gringa

In which I receive a compliment involving fried swine...

2007-03-08T07:15:00.000-08:00

One morning recently I was taming the Tina Turner from my hair with my professional-grade 400 degrees ceramic flat iron, all the while releasing into the air the gentle scent of…well…ironed hair. Which I suppose is not quite like burnt hair, but somewhere in the neighborhood.

Still in his pajamas, Vinja walked past my bathroom door on his way up to the kitchen. He came back a moment later, visibly crestfallen, and surveyed the aromatics with this nose.

[Sniff.] [Sniff.] “Dammit…[Sniff]…I thought someone was cooking bacon.”

To the beat of my buns

2007-03-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

I’m in a bit of a blubbery state at the moment. I came to this realization after a visit to the airport the other day, where I was seeing The Brit off for yet another trip, this time to South Africa. For reasons that are less than fascinating and verging on the ridiculous, I had to run the entire length of the international airport four whole times to go back and forth to my car twice. In heels. And aside from being really disgruntled that I had to run to get the camera charger in the first place, and then being really pissed off that I’d gotten the charger and somehow left the camera, and then being really whiny about the fact that I was clearly developing a world-class blister…I was terribly out of breath. And the next day, I was sore. SORE!!!

Oh jeez, what has become of me? Well, if what I’ve become is even remotely related to what I’ve been eating lately, well, then, I’m a hunk of triple crème brie and maybe a few slices of extra sharp cheddar. Ok, more than a few slices, but whatever.

I looked back over the last few months and realized that amidst the three work trips to Houston, DC, and San Antonio, the Thanksgiving holiday, the big Christmas dessert party at our house, having the family over for the week of Christmas, the NY trip for New Years, the worst three-week cold of my life, my annual surgery exam in January, the impromptu Japan trip recently, the treintañera in San Diego, the Oscars party, and work in general…I’d completely stopped exercising. I hadn’t been to the track to run, nor the indoor climbing gym to climb, nor my usual Tuesday night or Saturday morning Afrobrazilian dance class since at least early November. And now I was sore after a mere jog. A pissed off jog, but a jog nonetheless.

This explains why, rather than just staying home and eating cheese last night, I decided to go to dance class. And I’m glad I did. I’d almost forgotten how much I love the sound of live drums in a dance studio, not to mention how much I love shaking it to the sound of live drums in a dance studio. So, aside from a few old lady groans made by ~~some of the other dancers~~ yours truly during the warm-up stretches, and aside from the fact that though I managed to keep time with the music my ass consistently lagged one count behind, I’d say it was a wild success.

Operation Blubber Be Gone starts here.

Because achieving world peace is so much easier after you’ve had your morning coffee

2007-03-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

When I wake up in the morning, I have mucinous shmutz in the corners of my eyes and hair that could easily rival Tina Turner’s inside the Thunderdome. (Trust me, I could totally take her.) Needless to say, I can barely tolerate myself before I’ve had my first cup of coffee in the morning, much less be bothered to tolerate anyone else. This explains why I find it doubly surprising that the people over at Mirembe Kawomera Cooperative in Uganda have managed look beyond their eye shmutz and even beyond their Muslim, Jewish, and Christian lines of separation to run a successful coffee business together. And all to bring the world coffee that tastes that much sweeter because it represents peace, tolerance and economic justice.

Now I admit…I’ve become a lot less of an idealist since I started residency in a large city where people shoot the pulp out of each other over as little as pocket change or a dirty look. But this has a high Pay It Forward Index and a great Feel Good Potential, both of which appeal to the shrinking idealist inside me. Now, if they threw an Athiest in there and the whole thing didn’t come unhinged, then I might just turn into a weepy mess over the beauty of it all. But until then, I’ll enjoy their coffee, as it does, in whatever small way, make me feel like I’m contributing to their idea of Delicious Peace. I like it. (I also like their slogan: It’s not just a cup, but a just cup.) And the coffee’s pretty good as well! Go check them out. Drink in the delicious peace!

Careful though…if you drink TOO much, we may cause world-wide mania secondary to over-caffienation. And judging by what happens around the office when there’s coffee-induced mania… that might not be the best way to achieve world peace!

At least he smells nice

2007-03-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

The Brit and I were rushing recently to make a dinner reservation at a swanky restaurant in town. I’d just picked him up from the airport, as he’d been away on business again, and he was still wearing his company’s logo work shirt. I skillfully found a parking spot a block away from the restaurant, which, in San Francisco is about as difficult as finding a fully clothed man at the annual Gay Pride Parade…finding a naked one that doesn’t have a curiously large inguinal hernia is even more challenging. And sometimes parking can even be that difficult.

So now you’ll understand how we came to be standing by the opened trunk of my car in bustling downtown SF with a shirtless Brit digging through a haphazardly thrown together suitcase for a shirt when another driver pulled up alongside us. The driver, unable to tell if we were coming or going, wanted to know if we were about to vacate the parking spot. At which point my boyfriend, with his pasty white flesh all asunder, sprayed his left armpit with aerosolized deodorant, looked over at her mid-spray and said, “No.”

Ahh yes. That’s my man.

Superstition

2007-03-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve never been a particularly superstitious person. I’ve been known to walk under a ladder with reckless abandon (and without adverse outcome). I’ve actually had a black cat for a pet (and aside from the fact that he preferred pissing on the bath mat, nothing bad ever happened to me...to him though, well, that's a different story). And I’ve certainly broken a mirror or two. But the bad luck associated with that only seems to manifest in bad luck for mirrors: I’ve now broken several of them.

My Dochechka, however, is Russian. And Russians, as luck would have it, are a very superstitious people. I learned this when I stayed with Dochechka’s aunt, Mrs. Complainsalot, for one month when I was still in medical school. She lived very close to the county hospital where I was doing a trauma surgery rotation and was gracious enough to let me stay in her extra room. Free of charge. Well, almost free of charge…there were conditions. I had to listen to her complain. Which she did. (A lot.) And, I had to tell her, in explicit detail, about all the operations that I participated in as soon as I came home from each shift.

So one of my first evenings in the house, I came home from a 28-hour shift, over which there’d been several car accidents, shootings and stabbings and thus, several operations.

“Tale me, tale me…I wunt to know about zis operations you do.” She pointed to a seat in her kitchen and I sat down as instructed.

“Well, we had an 18 year old kid come in last night with several gun shot wounds to the abdomen, so we took him to the operating room…” she was still looking on with wonderment. “We did what’s called a exploratory laparotomy where we make an incision straight down the midline from just under the sternum to just above the pubic bone…”

I began to demonstrate the line of the incision on my own abdomen just to be sure she understood. I traced, with my index finger, the path that the scalpel had made the night before. I hadn’t even made it down to my belly button when she smacked my hands. Hard.

“VHAT ARE YOU DOING?!? You do not do zis! Zis show me of incision! You do not show me on your own body!!!” She looked at me with an incredulousness I’m sure she’d used before.

“What?” my hands still stinging from her ring-laden smack.

“You do not draw zis…zis line on your body. It is bad luck. Bad things will happen to you when you draw zis on yourself,” she explained.

Needless to say, it was a tough month. Bad things happened to me, alright…I got smacked a lot. It was just too hard a habit to break, this demonstrating of the incision on my own body. And four years into my surgery residency I still do it. I am happy to report though, that in spite of myself, and despite Mrs. Complainsalot’s warnings, I’ve somehow managed to survive the (non-existent) repercussions of the sternotomy we use for open heart surgery…the laparotomy we use for emergency abdominal operations…the chevron incision we use for pancreatic cancer resection…the inguinal incision we use for hernia repairs…

Don't get me wrong, I love my boss...I just don't LOVE my boss!

2007-03-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

This morning, I had a meeting with my boss. And it was high time we had one; it’d been a few weeks. This is not altogether uncommon as she's about as hard to pin down as a greased up pig at a county fair. Five minutes into my shpeal about some of the pathology data from one of the clinical breast cancer trials that we’re running, she interrupted me…

“By the way, thank you SO much for the bouquet,” she said.

“The bouquet?”

And then, wistfully and with her hand placed gently over her heart, “It was beautiful. But I especially loved the quote the most.”

“The quote?” At this point I was thoroughly confused.

“Go on,” she said, indicating that I should proceed with what I’d been discussing before the interruption.

“Uh, right, ok so…” And I continued on. I had a lot to cover, and considering I had no idea what she was talking about, I flippantly disregarded her bizarrely misplaced references to flora and literature.

A short while later, I got back to my desk. That is when it hit me. And BOY did it hit me. I immediately reached for my cell phone and sent the following text message to The Brit:

“I just had a meeting with my boss. I think I just located the final destination of those elusive Valentine’s Day flowers you attempted to have delivered to me at the office. She said she especially loved the quote. So…what sweet nothing did I just send to my dear boss?”

To which he responded:

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -Toulouse

You have taught me so much and given me even more. I love you with everything I have, I am so grateful and am so happy to be with you. Love, The Brit

Oh dear.

I don't stand a chance...

2007-03-02T18:50:00.000-08:00

...but still, I made the short list! Woo hoo!

Go check out all the far more interesting things that other people wrote about this week over at...

Just wanted to point out...you know, just in case you didn't notice...whatever...it's cool...

2007-03-01T16:00:00.000-08:00

Over at It's not me, It's you, Dochechka (ahem, Innigma) and I joined forces recently and came up with a top ten list of reasons why one should abstain from the well-intended exercise of setting friends up for the perpetual and unavoidable act of awkward social flailing and blundering. A hypothetical list, of course. Even still, though, it should be avoided. And here's why...

Top 10 Reasons NOT to be a Match-Maker for your Friends:

10. Your intention (to simply get him and her some action while they continue their search for “the one”) backfires (and leads to a tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship).

9. In its off-again phase, he and she both call you, repeatedly, and make it abundantly clear how profoundly wrong you were to have EVER thought that they would be compatible. In any way. Well, except for the sex way. In which they are pretty compatible indeed...

8. Ok. So it's on-again. Again. All things are whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string and suddenly...for more, see Top 10 Reasons...

* Dear 5 readers of mine, I know you have dating stories to tell. I know it. And yet, only one of you has shared! (Which was hysterical, by the way! Bravo Waspgoddess!) I beg of you, please share. Otherwise, Dochechka and I will be forced to exhaust all of our real stories and move to making stuff up. And trust me, when left to our own devices...well, let's just say it ain't pretty. And besides, there's just too much good stuff out there to justify doing that. Come on! Thanks, LCG

In which I whore my ass out for $100/hour

2007-02-28T20:30:00.000-08:00

A friend recently forwarded me the following email in the hopes that I might be able to offer its author some assistance:

Subject: Looking for a fit model

As a [insert big name jeans company] designer, I am currently looking for women to participate in the development for a new, fit, “curvy jean” in misses size 8 (height 5'5" - 5'9"), and petite size 6 (height 5'2" - 5'4").

Curvy jean is especially designed for a woman who has a small waist, with a larger seat and hips. Our aim is to develop the perfect jean fit for a woman who has this body shape so that the back does not gap when she sits.

Please note: We are looking for more of an "apple" shape, not "pear". A "pear" shape represents wide hips (from the front view), but is not necessary bubbly. An "apple" shape is one which is not wide from front view, but sticks out a lot from the side view. The model we need must have a bubbly "up high" booty. She is most likely African American or Hispanic…

Salary for a fitting is approximately $100 - per hour.

It has been extremely hard to find this shape of woman through a modeling agency. Please contact me ASAP if you know of anyone you think is appropriate shape/size.

To which I responded…

Subject: The apple of my ~~eye~~ rear

To whom it may concern:

I can only imagine how difficult it’s been for you to find an apple-shaped model through an agency. I mean, you know as well as I do that none of those chics ever eat solid food, much less the carbohydrate-laden arroz con gandules that us Hispanic chicas eat.

I must say, it was with great joy that I received your email….as it brought with it not only new information (to think that all these years I’ve been made to feel like a PEAR when I’m really an APPLE!) but also a flicker of hope. You see, shopping for jeans has always been the bane of my existence. And your words brought tears to my eyes…tears of joy at the prospect of finally being able to find jeans, made right here in this country by real live gringos, rather than having to travel all the way to Brazil where they’ve had the good sense to put spandex into their denim for decades now.

Not only will you be saving me money, you’ll be sparing me the embarrassment and emotional trauma of showing my plumber’s crack every single time I sit down or bend over. And if this is the case, bueno...my apple orchard is all yours. (For $100/hour, though, right?)

Sincerely,
La Cubana Gringa

I have my reasons for believing I’m alive in part because my mother would have killed me if I’d died…

2007-02-27T23:30:00.000-08:00

First there was the graze with death. And then, a few years later, there was the full brush with it. This, aside from a small matter in 2005 involving a lion in Namibia, comprised the scariest moments of my life. As time distances me from the experience, it dulls, as Time always does, the feelings and emotions tied to it that were so overwhelming at the time…

…that strangely calm feeling of fear…
…that helpless feeling of certain death for us both…
…that feeling of complete disbelief that not only had I survived, but Dochechka as well…
…that feeling of utter gratitude to just be alive…

I find myself wanting to reach back…to always remember that fear, so that I can never forget my gratitude. I think it’s important to remember to be grateful for life, the fragile gift that it is…it’s what keeps me from sweating the small stuff…and by that I mean, it’s what keeps me from getting out of my car in rush-hour traffic and strangling the driver who decides to cut me, and everyone behind me, off by merging into my lane at the very last minute. (Seriously, though, would you QUIT doing that?)

In the Spring of 2003, right before we were to graduate from medical school, Dochechka and I headed down to Costa Rica to do a one month Community Medicine rotation. This basically meant that we worked in area hospitals and clinics with all the diligence of the rest of the Latin American world…which entailed rewarding each work session (however brief) with fried foods, taking plenty of siestas (usually after the fried food), and lots of four-day weekends (every weekend). It was rough. Real rough. And if the Costa Ricans weren’t so great at frying up cheese, I doubt I would have survived the entire month.

Our last four-day weekend in Costa Rica was spent on the southeast coast, near the border of Panama. We were staying in a beachfront hotel we’d specifically selected to accommodate my boyfriend at the time, Swims Like Fish, who’d decided to come down for a visit. Early one morning, we opted to do something completely uncharacteristic of us: forego our usual breakfast of fried cheese and gayo pinto and go to the beach instead. It was a beautiful morning and the call of the ocean, which was just footsteps away from our accommodation’s balcony, overwhelmed even our deepest gastronomic urges. (And if you only knew the depths of these, you'd be as amazed as I am to this day that we turned away from them temporarily.) Funny but, had we gone with our usual instincts, we would have been spared the ordeal that ensued. (This just underlines what I’ve been trying to tell people all along regarding the little-known, potentially life-saving properties of fried cheese.)

We walked through a grove of palm trees along the short path that led to the beach. I set both my bright orange, floral sarong and my camera down on a massive piece of driftwood and walked 20 feet down to the water’s edge with Dochechka. It was a truly majestic morning. We watched the sunrise with the ocean lapping at our feet and ankles…a sunrise whose shades of tangerine and pink made a seamless union between ocean and sky. Where there was once Horizon, there was only Sun…for just a few delicious, suspended moments in time. And the three of us were the only ones on the beach to witness them.

Those small, tangerine moments seemed like gifts, and I wanted to remember them by taking back with me a few shells from the beach. There were sea urchin shells everywhere, small and large, all bleached white by the salt and sun. So Dochechka and I busied ourselves with collecting them while Swims Like Fish went for a swim. In knee-deep water, she and I chased urchin shells being pushed back and forth by the tide, collecting handfuls at a time and bringing them back up to where we’d stowed our belongings. I’d never seen so many shells and I suppose I was too preoccupied to notice that with one wave, the water level rose from our knees to our hips. It didn’t seem to be a problem until the very next wave came in and swept us up, off of the sandy ocean floor…and when the wave receded back out to sea, instead of placing us gently back down, it took Dochechka and me with it. For a few, blissfully unaware moments, the fact that we were quite suddenly unable to touch down anymore seemed interesting, rather than dangerous, to me. I turned toward the shore to look back at the piece of driftwood where we’d set our things…my bright orange sarong was now merely a blurry speck of color roughly 4o feet away. Hmm, would you look at that? I thought. Treading water, I turned to check on Dochechka just in time to see a wave smack her in the face…she came back up from under the water, but she was gasping frantically. She’d swallowed a lot of water. And it was then, when I saw the look of sheer panic in Dochechka’s eyes, that I realized we were in trouble.

At this point, I thought we should remain calm…that this was a totally manageable and entirely temporary problem that we could swim our way out of. I mean, the floor couldn’t be that far down, could it? It was just there a second ago. So I swam over to her as she flailed and struggled to regain composure and I said to her, “It’s ok. We just need to swim out of this. We can totally do this. Let’s just swim back to shore.” She nodded in understanding.

So we both tried. We gave it a really, really good try. But considering that collectively, our swimming capabilities amount to those of an 8 year old who learned how to swim the summer prior, we didn’t get very far. I could feel the strong tug of the rip tide….and when I looked back up at the shore…60 feet away. There was a small speck of orange there somewhere. But where? This is not good.

I looked back at Dochechka who’d failed as miserably as I had to get any closer to shore. She grabbed for me, wanting me to help her. All the while, more waves were coming…they were getting bigger, more frequent, and they seemed to be coming from every angle now. There was little time for much of anything other than dodging waves.

I looked for Swims Like Fish and saw him back near the water’s edge, standing where we’d started, using his right hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the rising sun; he was scanning the waves looking for us. We made eye contact. I waved my hand for him to come over. And with that, he dove in, disappearing under the water. And for a few moments…those infinite seconds that passed in which I couldn’t see him through the waves…I screamed at Dochechka to swim with me. But, having swallowed wave after wave of water to the face, all she could do was look at me and nod that “No” she simply couldn’t do that. I didn’t know what to do. SLF was nowhere to be seen. Had he drowned trying to get over to us? And there was no way I could leave Dochechka behind to attempt swimming it alone. Wave after wave after wave came in all around us…

Then, suddenly, SLF popped out from behind a massive wall of water. At this point I wasn’t as breathless as Dochechka, so I pretended to be calm and told him to go help her first…so he swam past me and disappeared underneath another swell, leaving me alone to be my own swimming coach.

You can do this, you can do this. Just swim. Remain calm. Just swim. SWIM!! I willed my arms and legs to kick and paddle. I kicked. And kicked. I tried free-style stroke. Breast stroke. Doggy paddling. Alone in the water, I kicked until I was grunting with effort. A wave came in from my left side and half of it went into my mouth. Remain calm. Catch your breath. Turn over onto your back and just float for a second, someone said that was a good way to rest. Who told me that once? Turn over on your side…just catch your breath. Catch your breath. That plan was foiled by another wave which managed to make it’s way into my mouth….forcing me to turn back over and try to swim again. Tired now. I looked up at the beach to check my progress. But there was none. It was as if I was swimming backwards while facing forwards…the shore proceeded to distance itself from me. The beach was still empty. There was no one there to flag down for help. And I couldn’t even see any orange now. But I knew it was there, somewhere. I know my orange sarong is waiting there for me…and my camera full of great pictures from our trip…and a pile of beautiful, white, delicate sea urchin shells to take back with me. I know they’re there. Somewhere. I imagined someone finding them in a few hours. It would be the only evidence that the three of us had been on the beach earlier. Someone would find the evidence…we’d fail to turn up for check out at the hotel…people would put two and two together…eventually they’d report us missing. This is fucking fantastic, my mother is going to be SO PISSED.

Motivated by the prospect of my mother’s mental breakdown following my impending death, I tried once more to make an earnest swim for the shore. But failed. And I think I called out, I know I at least thought of calling out, SLF's name. Seconds later, he appeared. He heard me? “You got Dochechka out?”

“No,” he said calmly. “She’s fighting me too much right now...I’m going to have to knock her out if she keeps it up.”

Knock her out? Wait. You left her BEHIND???? He must have read my mind. Or did I actually say that? I can’t remember.

But he said, “That’s what you’re supposed to do when someone fights you…let me just get you to where you can touch down.” I looked back and saw nothing but rising and shifting walls of water. No Dochechka in sight. I felt SLF's arm around my waste. He was swimming. We were moving. But where is she? Where IS she? WHERE IS SHE? I couldn’t see her anymore and I started crying. She was alone. We weren’t helping her. She is all alone!

Then, there was sand. Under my feet…there was sand. “Ok…you can walk now,” I heard him say. He let go of me and I tried to stand, but I fell to my hands and knees. “Can you walk now? Go. Go back to the hotel. Get help. I’m just going to rest here for a second then go get Dochechka.”

Rest??? You’re going to REST? But when I looked back at him to scream at him to go get her, please go get her, he was already gone. He disappeared again. Ok. I’ll go to the hotel. I’ll run to the hotel. I’ll get help. I tried to run, but I hadn’t yet caught my breath and my peripheral vision was dimming…blackening with my panicked hyperventilation…my legs were like jello, and the sand like quicksand, swallowing each of my weak attempts at a step. I looked back. Still no sign of either one of them in the water…just water and more water. Oh no!

I turned back and, like a Godsend, there were two women strolling onto the beach. I made my way toward them, waving my jello arms around, screaming, weakly, in breathless, ill-assembled Spanish for them go get help.

“No…todo esta bien…todo bien. No te preocupas,” one of them said.

What do you mean everything’s okay??? I thought this in English, and while nodding that No, everything is NOT okay, I searched for the words in Spanish.

But before I could find them, the woman said, “No, mira. Todo esta bien…mira.” She pointed towards the ocean. I turned around, just in time to see SLF pulling Dochechka up onto the sand.

In a second I was there. She was blue. He’d laid her flat on her back and her lips were blue, her chest was still. I dropped to my knees and looked at her for a second, about to check for a pulse and start CPR…when she turned her head slowly to the left and coughed up a mouthful of water. And then took in a big gulp of air. Pink again. Breathing.

I stood up and walked back to edge of the water…and cried the hardest cry in my life up til that point. I thought they’d both died. My boyfriend and the closest thing I have to a sister. And before that, I’d thought that she and I were going to die. Suddenly the relief drowned out the fear. There remained only gratitude. And a slightly less mysterious ocean.

I didn’t dare tell my Mamacusa about the ordeal until I was safely back in the States. Mostly because no Google or Yahoo map could have convinced her that Costa Rica’s San Jose was inland enough to eradicate the chances of a massive killer tsunami coming in and yanking me back out to sea. So I spared her the state of panic. When I came back, though, of course I told her all about it. And, in addition to the incredulous look which made its way to me as effectively through the phone lines as it would had she been standing before me, I got the following response…

“If you would have drowned, I would have KILLED you!!”

Which, of course, defies all logic and reason. But then again, so does love. And thank goodness for that…because where would we be in this broken and beautiful world if it weren’t for the senseless lunacy of love? (And fried cheese?)

* Though it didn’t end up working out for Swims Like Fish and me, I am eternally grateful to him for what he did that day.
* I still have those sea urchin shells…in a bowl with sand from that beach and a candle the color of that ocean.

Am I getting too old for this?

2007-02-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

Thursday
Came home from work and spent a good portion of the evening in the kitchen making two Cuban flans in preparation for this Sunday’s party (the annual Oscars party The Brit and I host).

Friday
Came home from work. Went with The Brit to two different grocery stores to buy the obnoxious amount of groceries needed for the Oscars party menu. Did this til 10pm. Then, spent what was left of the evening in the kitchen making a Chocolate-Raspberry Mousse Cake.¹ Did this til 1:30 AM. Then…packed. Went to bed at 2 AM.

Saturday
Got on a plane to San Diego at 7:15 AM, leaving The Brit behind to do a full day of cooking by himself. Ran ceaselessly around San Diego with The Mexican Ho²in preparation for her 30^th birthday party that evening. This entailed picking up enough tortillas to feed both the Mexican AND the Irish sides of her family morning, noon and night for roughly a week, inhaling a quick breakfast, taking a trip to the nail salon for a manicure and pedicure (she’s kind of a Diva), picking up our favorite Italian Ho at the airport, getting the Mexican Ho’s makeup done at Bobbi Brown (hey, she didn’t get the Diva title accidentally), dressing up, and finally…partying. In her parent’s lavishly done-up back yard…complete with lights, papel picado, a Mariachi band, a piñata, a DJ, a rented dance floor, a rented deluxe porta-potty, 80 or so of her closest friends and family (including an abuelita who makes one mean tamale) and enough beer, wine and sangria to permanently damage the livers of everyone in attendance. It was a Treintañera the caliber of which more than made up for the fact that she'd never had the more traditional coming-of-age Quinceañera party. And we were sure to celebrate it Spanglish style, in honor of her Mexican Irishness. (Or is it Irish Mexican-ness?) Feliz birthday, mi Ho Mexicana…estoy tan happy que I was able to venir to your party! Espero que you enjoyed it…because I sure lo disfrute! Besos y hugs!

Sunday
Got on plane back to SF at 6:20 AM. Arrived home at 8 AM to find The Brit, in the kitchen, experiencing a palpable bout of uncharacteristic panic. Which was weird. He never stresses. In fact, he’s often so completely level-headed and reasonable that it’s annoying. I’ve mentioned this before. Anyway, there he was, armpit deep in a kitchen whose counters were no longer visible under a sea of dirty mixing bowls, measuring cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, cutting boards, recipes…having finished only two thirds of the planned dishes³ and currently mid-way through the painstaking assembly of the Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls. He was clearly only moments away from beginning to twitch and babble senselessly from the stress, so I took over the kitchen duties, freeing him up to go set things up at the art studio where we were having the party. I then spent the next several hours making ludicrous portions of Ham, Leek & Three cheese Quiche, Red and Blue Potato Salad, Smoked Salmon Squares, Chicken Satay Bites and the ganache for my Chocolate-Raspberry Mousse Cake. All just in time to make it to the party one hour late. But with all the food. Which I then spent the next several hours serving. In a cute cocktail dress and very uncomfortable shoes.

All of this was okay, and moderately manageable…until the very end when a certain board member of the art studio (the very one who approached The Brit and proposed that we harness the popularity of the annual Oscars party, which we usually hold at our house free of charge to the invitees, and turn it into a fundraiser for her art studio) started having a public conniption about the fact that the party hadn’t generated as much money as she’d expected and how it was all just a waste of effort and how she’d put SO much work into it all and boo hoo friggin’ hoo. Thank goodness there weren’t any bacon stuffed pepperocini’s left over because I might have shoved them somewhere unsavory. And thank goodness for the fact that I was too tired to shove one of my painfully edematous and throbbing feet anywhere as well.

Instead, I silently applauded my restraint (promising myself a nice piece of cheese as a reward) and headed back home with The Brit, in the rain, with a car full of dirty dishes to a kitchen full of filthy dishes. Which we then cleaned. Til 1 AM.

Monday
Back to work

I need a big nap. But first, some cheese...

1. I'd love to provide the link to this recipe but can't seem to find it online. Only have the hard copy in Bon Appetit magazine. SO good.
2. A term of endearment developed in our younger years...back when were too young to appreciate that ten years later, it might not be so fun to be introduced to a friend's family & friends and have them say: "Ohhh, right!! You're one of the ho's!!!"
3. He'd already made the Spinach Dip, Cheesy Onion Roll-Ups, Crunchy Chicken Bites, Chickpea Salad with Parsley, Lemon, and Sun-dried Tomatoes, Greek Pasta Salad with Roasted Vegetables and Feta, Rice Salad with Feta, Citrus and Mint, Stuffed Pepperocinis, Mushroom Shallot Quiche, and Pistacchio Brittle Cheesecake.

Sometimes their buns ain't so bad either...

2007-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

I leaned in and asked in my best sultry, suggestive voice, “What’s the difference between a hot Sicilian and a hot Italian?”

“Uhh…” he stammered, caught off-guard. “The hot Sicilian has fennel in it.”

“Oh, great! Well then I’ll take two!”

And with that, a hot Sicilian sausage dinner was had. Complete with sauteed onions and peppers and warm, toasty buns. And beer. (And for the record, the fennel makes ALL the difference. I suggest you demand this from all of your hot Sicilians in the future.)

Play music...not with peoples' lives

2007-02-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

While in my car, I usually either listen to one of the 5 CD’s I haven’t changed since I put them in there (which was when I bought the car 3 years ago) or to NPR. But one morning recently, I’d had enough of Postal Service and had already listened to the morning news round that was on it’s second go of airtime on NPR. So I turned my radio to one of the local radio stations, one that has a very popular morning show. And I quickly realized why I haven’t made a habit of this...

I’m not sure if it was luck or planetary aligning karma, but at the exact moment I turned to the station, one of the two morning DJ’s began speaking, with absolutely NO knowledge, on this 'great' new weight loss procedure: The Stomach Balloon. It wasn’t so much the “Oh! My! God! I am, like, totally going to get that! What a totally, like, fantastic idea! Eat all the food you want, like, and get full faster! I TOTALLY want one!” that annoyed me. I mean, it was annoying to hear a perfectly grown woman speaking with all the aptitude of a 13-year-old who knows better but just wants to be cool. And forget the fact that this balloon, while it may be a temporizing measure for weight loss, it does not change one’s lifestyle. Anyone who’s lost weight and kept weight off knows that it’s the healthy decisions that you make everyday going forward that make it happen. Not some balloon you put in and then take out a few months later. Anyway, what was really annoying about the segment, was that this DJ then said, “Where can I GET one of those?? Oh?!? They’re only in Europe? Hmm…maybe I’ll just go home and swallow a balloon!”

Oh, for the LOVE. I envisioned a whole bunch of desperate overweight women beginning the day with a seemingly harmless morning radio show and ending it with a visit to the ER. Thankfully, at least to my knowledge, there were no adverse events due to that extremely ignorant broadcast.

The reason this broadcast bothered me is because I think that TV and radio has an obligation, to a certain degree, to report responsibly. Which is to say, that if they don’t know about something, something that could harm someone, they should either NOT talk about it, talk about it but with the disclaimer that they are perhaps not well-informed, or investigate it properly before talking about it. Seems like common sense to me. In an ideal world, where the truth sells more than sensationalism, of course....

And in this ideal world, things like what happened in Sacramento, California recently wouldn’t happen. The morning DJ’s on a popular radio station there held a “Hold your wee for a Wii” contest in which the contestants had to drink as much water as possible without urinating or vomiting. Little did these DJ's know, even water is not innocuous. And despite the fact that a nurse even called into the show and told them that drinking too much water could be dangerous, they continued on with the contest. And because of it, a 28-year-old wife and mother of three small children died. All because she drank so much water that she decreased the osmotic pressure of her blood which, among other things, causes brain swelling that can be, and in this case was, lethal. And all for a Nintendo Wii.

I think Robert Browning put it best: “Ignorance is not innocence, but sin.”

I'd like to thank the Academy for this honor...

2007-02-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

It seems that in addition to the many surgical procedures at which I’ve become skilled during my residency, there is another procedure with which I am also apparently very familiar: Open mouth, insert foot. This, I learned at a recent out-ing…one in which I played a starring role. If there were an Oscar for Best Leading Idiot, I think I’d have a good chance of winning…

Allow me to set the stage with a brief prologue: Vinja decided a few months back to randomly subscribe to a few magazines to help out some neighborhood kid trying to raise money through subscription sales. One of the 12 magazines that seems to pile up on our kitchen counter almost daily (only slightly exaggerated) is Out Magazine. This, for those of you who don’t know, is a magazine that touts itself as “A gay and lesbian perspective on style, entertainment, fashion, the arts, politics, culture and the world at large.” Which I am ALL for as the men and women offering their aforementioned informed perpective in said magazine are greased up and gooooood lookin’. (And I’ve always been of the opinion that a little body grease helps get a point across that much more effectively.) A gay friend, Huerequeque, came over, perused the latest Out magazine, and found (amongst the smorgasbord of delicious manmeat) a great one-page article on how to select a good sake wine. He tore it out and considered giving it to one of his coworkers who’d recently asked for his advice on a good Japanese brand of sake. Considered it, that is, until he turned the page over and saw that there were a few small details that might ‘out’ him to his coworker. One of those details being that it actually said, in small print, “Out” at the bottom of the page. The other of those details being the full-page underwear ad featuring the lubed-up torsos of two fine male specimens (both with cullions of curiously large proportions) who were tenderly holding hands. We agreed that this might give him away. So he kept the ad to himself. Umm…I mean the sake article. *cough* He kept the article to himself. *cough*

Fast forward to a dinner a couple months later at which I am in attendance along with Huerequeque and some of his coworkers, some of whom are mutual friends, others of whom are perfect strangers. One of those strangers, Mr. Straight-Laced Protestant White Male Married With Children, was sitting across from me at the dinner table. The sake, selected by the knowledgable Huerequeque, was flowing. As was the conversation. And somehow, somehow Mr. SLPWMMWC turned the conversation toward the topic of Huerequeque’s proclivities. Don’t ask me how. All I know is that I had little to do with how the converstion started and everything to do with how it ended…

As if scripted, I said to Mr. SLPWMMWC, “Oh, me and Huerequeque go waaaaaaayyyyy back! So I know ALL ABOUT his proclivities!!!!” [Obnoxiously loud laugh.]

“Oh yeah??” Mr. SLPWMMWC joked back at me. “So you know about all the catholic school girls he brings back home with him?? HA HA HA…”

“Catholic school girls?? HA!!” I chortled. “More like CATHOLIC SCHOOL BOYS!!!!!” [Even bigger obnoxious laugh.]

Oh God. What a twit.

Now, in my defense, there was sake involved. Lots. (So, clearly I am the victim here. It’s all Huerequeque’s fault. For ordering such good sake.) And this conversation, including my blunder, occurred almost too quickly for me to even appreciate the momentary look of shock on Mr. Straight-Laced Protestant While Male Married With Children’s face. He scrambled, just as quickly as I’d gaffed, to change the subject. But by then I realized just how much of my foot I’d stuck into my mouth. The only reason my entire leg didn’t go in is because I have pretty sizable thighs. And though my mouth is big, my thighs are bigger.

After a moderate amount of gagging to get my foot dislodged from my pharynx, I leaned over to Huerequeque who was sitting next to me and whispered (out of earshot of Mr. SLPWMMWC who was busily talking someone else’s ear off about his two beautiful, straight, God-fearing children who loved sports and church), “Sooooo….I probably wasn’t supposed to have said that, huh?”

“Yeah, NO,” he smirked. “But I suppose it’s not anything that wouldn’t have come out eventually anyway.”

I nodded, thankful that he was so gracious as to roll with the punches. “Well, let’s look on the bright side,” I said, “I guess now you can give him that article on sake!”

Check out the size of my lugnuts...

2007-02-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

This is for all you ladies out there who think that changing flat tires is a job for solely the menfolk. I just did it.¹ All by myself.² In my house slippers.³It’s important to know how to change a tire. And I’ll tell you why. With a hypothetical example: You’re driving along on the freeway. You feel a strange change of weight in the back passenger side area of your car, and look out your passenger side window just in time to see your hub cap spinning off into Never Never Land. (Never to be recaptured.) You slow down, pull over to the right shoulder of the freeway, get out of the passenger side (to avoid getting killed by the fast moving traffic in the left lane next to you) and examine the flat tire before you. Bummer. Crawl back in, and drive slowly to the next exit, which you take and then make a series of right turns looking for somewhere quiet to park and call for help. You park. Look around. And realize you’ve landed at a fire station. Where a hot, young, tall, dark fireman comes out to change your tire for you.⁴

No, wait. Crap. It would seem I’ve dug out an argument for NOT knowing how to change a tire. Hang on. Allow me to start over.

Ok. So you’re on the side of the freeway, alone, with a flat tire. No exit for miles. No cell phone reception. And some creepy guy with a wife beater on and a tattoo that says “Money over Bitches” across his right arm pulls over and offers to help you. Having no idea how to change your tire and with few other options for help, you accept his offer. After which, he pummels you on the side of the head, knocks you out, does a number of other unsavory things to you before he kills you, thus making you the next tragic headline on the evening news. See how this can unfurl into disaster so quickly? All because you didn’t know how to change a tire??⁵

So here’s my advice to you ladies. Read your car’s instruction manual. Know where your jack and spare tire are. And when you think you don’t have the upper body strength to loosen or tighten your lugnuts? Use your lower body strength. That’s what I did; I literally put the Thingy To Unscrew The Lugnuts onto the lugnut (I love saying that word) and stood on the handle to unscrew it with the weight of my body. And I did the same to screw them back on. Voila!

And, now you can beat those creepies, the ones that prey on women who don’t know shit about cars, about the head with your jack! Turns out it has many purposes!

I am woman! Hear me roar!⁶

1. Under the supervision of my trusty, and very manly, roommate, Mr. Wonderful. (Who gets his name because he was a living donor for his father when he needed a liver transplant. It doesn’t get more wonderful than that.) I had Mr. Wonderful around just to make sure I didn’t kill myself with an ill-positioned jack.
2. Only because I had to. The Brit is still out of town on business.
3. Seriously. I was in my house slippers.
4.This actually happened to me about 8 years ago. Sadly, he did not take off his shirt while he performed this manly duty. Despite the fact that I suggested he do so. You know, it was hot outside.
5. Thankfully, this is not what happened to me. (Though I have encountered a man with a wife beater and a similar tattoo. At work, in the ER.) I simply came out one morning to go to work and found a flat tire.
6. Though, let’s be clear here. Next time this happens to me, if The Brit is in town, he’ll change the tire. :)

Dear Offender of Follicular Decency,

2007-02-18T22:58:00.001-08:00

Psssst!! [Whispered, urgently:] Hey. You with the desperation spread sparsely across your head. Let’s step into my office and have a brief chat…

[Close door.]

Ok. So, I understand the need to cling, like a leach to supple flesh, to your former youthful self. I, for one, cannot claim to be immune to the desire to remain 21 in corporeal years, while still aging like a fine wine on the inside. With the big Three Ohhhhhhh lurking around the corner, me and my eye cream understand, completely. Trust me. However. This does not mean that I cavort around town screaming “OMG, I like, totally LOVE Forever 21!!!” while donning something spandexy and hot pink that I purchased at Forever 21. And, more importantly, it does not mean that if Mother Nature decided to rob me of the long and feminine tresses with which I’ve always been blessed, that my retaliation against her would consist of this:Aside from the fact that this is a total perversion of what hair was originally intended for, it’s also a symbol of something so much more pathetic than that: Desperation. And there it is, spackled across your balding cranium for all the world to see. Little do you know that those few strands which you’ve asked to do the job of a half-head of hair are as good as placing a banner across your lengthening forehead that says, in bold type, “I’d rather look like this than admit to myself that I’m losing my hair.” (Substitute “this” with “a sad, middle-aged man grasping with white knuckles at the last hope for a full head of hair.”)

You’re not fooling anyone. Not even you, Donald Trump.

Or you, Benny Hinn. Seriously, even though both of you do some sort of clever circa-70’s feathering trick with your thinning hair, it’s obvious what you’re hiding under there. And, frankly, it’s just sad.

It’s not like there aren’t options out there for you. And, that, Dear Offender of Follicular Decency, is what I’ve followed you three city blocks to pull you aside and discuss with you. See, you’re a special case: You’ve gone beyond the usual offense of pulling a thin veil of side hair over the top, and have started dipping into the back and bottom-most section of hair to do so. And I just cannot, with good conscience, allow you to continue on without telling you first that there are solutions.

There are toupes, hair implants, wigs. But perhaps the best thing, for everyone involved, would be for you to just bravely shave it all off. It’s a big step, I know. But just think of all the money you will save on hair products. And, you should know by now, that Britney Spears did it. So, now it’s the cool thing to do anyway. (Just don’t go showing your labia around town while you’re at it, though you don’t have any, so that shouldn’t be a problem.)

Anyway, please. I beg of you. Do the right thing. You’ll feel better. And besides, if you wouldn’t do it to your dog, why would you do it to yourself? You wouldn’t, would you?

With love (tough love),
La Cubana Gringa

Japan is fantastic, part ni thru…

2007-02-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

This post comes to you after having had a horrid, horrid week…in a sort of ridiculous- OH-MY-GOD-can-this-get-any-worse- do-I-really-have-a-flat-tire-after-all-that-I-have-already-suffered-???? sort of way. I’m sure I’ll write about it at some point. But first, the unfinished business of Japan.
Having said my piece about the sheer joy of my repeated encounters with heated toilet seats while in Japan recently, allow me to pick up where I left off in my list of all things wonderful about my trip. Now where was I…

Oh yes, the bathroom. Of course.

As if a warm bum weren’t enough to bring pure bliss to the already satisfying experience of expelling unneeded bodily waste, the Japanese thought of one additional thing to, if nothing else, entertain you while in the restroom. Allow me to introduce you to:

Ni: The Bidet, digitally remasteredNow, the bidet is not a new concept. I’ve certainly seen my fair share in Latin-America, not to mention in the bathroom of my anal retentively clean grandmother. (No pun intended.) But THIS one went above and beyond the usual bone-chilling squirt to the perineum. First of all, it wasn’t cold at all. It was the perfect temperature. And second of all, it wasn’t just a water rinse. On the contrare, there was a warm rinse followed by an apricot-scented sudsy episode followed by another warm rinse. The only thing missing was an automated arm to pat me dry. But not to worry, I put that suggestion in the ideas box just outside the bathroom door.

In between my long, luxurious rests in the various bathrooms of Japan (you now understand why), I did manage to squeeze in a few hours of sightseeing a day. And my my my if there weren’t sights to see in Tokyo.

San: NeonThe Japanese looooooooooooove them some Neon. I’m talking Neon approaching levels which could provoke seizures in even the most cataract-protected 80 year old Vegas stripper. And that’s serious neon. It was magnificent in the sense that I now know what it’s like to be on the inside of a pinball machine.

Shi: Vending machines.
I came to the conclusion that perhaps the only thing that the Japanese valued more than neon was the ability to quench their thirst (or their itch for a cigarette) any time of day or night that they wanted. This, I concluded after taking notice of the fact that there seemed to be vending machines about every ten feet. And I’m not talking just in the city center…even in the small residential neighborhoods, in between the houses, on the corners, in the bathrooms. (Ok, not really in the bathrooms...though that would be one more nice thing about them if it were true!) And they were always stocked with an assortment of sugary soft drinks, beer, and cigarettes. I daresay that if we vended such addiction hazards to our country’s youth without so much as an ID check, we’d have an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, alcoholism, and smoking. Oh wait. We already do. (Which begs the question, why don’t the Japanese?)

Go: Unrecognizable food

Boiled starchy items. Pink gelatinous balls. Bento boxes-to-go with various selections of edible matter that have clearly either been popped out of a mold or stamped out of a sheet of mushed-together digestible substances. Interesting. Verrrrry interesting.

Roku: Flat booties
By and large, or more appropriately stated, by and small, the Japanese have absolutely NO junk in the trunk. Which is to say that I stood out like a sore thumb. Or a sore bum, rather. Which I was ok with. It just meant I had to be realistic about the potential for shopping for jeans in that country….that potential being zero.

Shichi: Deep tradition Coming from a culture that has it’s own traditions, I could really appreciate this. And, in fact, this is what I loved most about my trip to Japan. While the heated toilet seats were lovely, the beauty and the richness of the history in the country was my favorite thing about Japan. Nothing, not even The Brit’s insistence on playing and replaying of the soundtrack to The Last Samurai (I’ve mentioned his love of movie scores before, haven’t I?), could take away from this.

A very lovely trip. Thanks, to my dear Brit, who made it happen! (And who also took most of these pics!)

Because shared misery is THAT much funnier

2007-02-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the one day of the year in which we regard it perfectly acceptable for a pudgy little pervert with wings to flitter about and shoot an arrow into our pocketbooks (uhh, I mean hearts), may I direct your attention to this new blog: It's not me, it's you!

Permit me this one shameless plug as this is, in fact, a blog that my dear Dochechka (who chooses to remain an enigma to me in her selection of Innigma as her pen name) and I have started. We do so in the hopes of creating a safe environment in which to poke fun of ourselves and at The Perpetual and Unavoidable Act of Awkward Social Flailing and Blundering (known to most people as the act of Dating).

We've cast out our first tales of failure on the Battlefield of Love (Dochechka's with Mr. Sexessity and mine with Dr. Ferrari) and we do hope you enjoy them. Then, we hope you dig deep into your experiences, go on...dig, and share with us the most atrocious dating story in your personal arsenal. I'd like to start the tagging with declaring here and now that I expect great things from my dearest Waspgoddess and Mr. Poopie. Then, I leave it in your capable hands to tag the next authors. (Note: Tagging is not required for authorship...if you've got a story, we want to hear it! Send it in!)

Happy Feb 14th.

*The above pic of cupid was borrowed from this funny valentine's day card site. Check it out.

Foolproof remedy for insomnia of the jetlagged variety

2007-02-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Just follow these 5 easy steps:

1)Lay down in your bed, with your most comfy jammies on, all room lights off and eyes closed

2) Become mindful of your breathing, relaaaaaaaaxing into each deep, slow breath...appreciate how with each one, your heart rate gently decelerates

3) Feel the weight of your body on your mattress…so much so that you’d swear you were paralyzed under your own exhausted weightiness

4) After 45 minutes, when you finally realize that this Mind Over Body crap isn’t going to work, climb up the stairs to the kitchen and open up a bottle of Argentinian red wine and drink roughly 1/3 of it

5) Nightie night

Oh. And I should probably tell you that there’s also a Step 6: Wake up after 45 minutes with a full bladder (thanks to all that wine) and repeat steps 1-5 all over again. Dammit.

The seedy underbelly of the frequent flyers, exposed

2007-02-11T23:01:00.000-08:00

The continuation of “Japan is fantastic”, entitled “Part ni thru…(whatever number I can manage to count up to in Japanese)” will have to wait until I can get home and put the pictures together as so much of what I have to say about this Japan trip must be accompanied by a photograph. Try as I may with words, I just don’t think I could do justice to the new things I saw, and particularly to the new things I ate. Those bright pink cubes of indeterminableness must be allowed their own moment of glory by means of a picture.

As of right now, however, I’m currently reclining in a comfortable leather chair enjoying free wireless internet access, free alcohol, and free snacks. You wouldn’t think I’d be describing the Narita airport, or any other airport for that matter. But I am. It’s just the part of the airport that us commonfolk never get to see: The Luxury Lounge. You know, the place where all the platinum and gold card holding members of the friendly skies get to enter, leaving us economy classers behind to claw at the gold plated doors. I’m usually one of those sad individuals, but today…today, instead of clawing my way in only to be forcefully removed by security, I glided right through the doors upon the invitation of The Brit, who is, in fact, a frequent flyer and a sworn member of this secret society (hence my free ticket to Japan in the first place).

I, La Cubana Gringa, am reporting to you live from said Luxury Lounge…and I must say [while shaking my head disapprovingly] that I am utterly appalled by what I see. Vast open spaces, dimly lit and pleasing to the eye. Comfortable, spacious seating, all with electric plugs for laptop computers. Paintings and glass blown sculptures from local artists displayed much as they would be, and probably should be, in a museum. The replacement of the typical horribly drab elevator music (usually punctuated with obscenely loud and yet indecipherable flight announcements) with no music at all and only the occasional soft, sultry, clear voice announcing the next flight. There’s also the periodicals section, in which they have countless copies of all the major newspapers free for the taking. Then there’s the beer machine. A beer machine, you ask? Yes. A machine in which you place the chilled pint glass which you’ve selected out of the adjacent fully stocked refrigerator and place it onto the platform which is then tipped ever so gently to a 30 degree angle whilst the machine pours the perfect pint of beer and tops it off with the perfect amount of foam. Every time. (Trust me, I’ve “tested” it several times now.) Sadly, there is no such similar contraption to make the perfect vodka tonic, but I suppose [sigh] that the fact that I can pour myself a bottomless vodka tonic an adequate alternative. And then there’s the fruit. And the cheese. And the crackers. And the cheese. And the little packets of pretzels/nuts/spiced-conglomerates-of-carb-material. And the cheese. Add a hot male stripper and they could start hosting bachelorette parties here!

I can’t BELIEVE The Brit and all of his brothers and sisters in the frequent flyer society have been holding out on us like this! Appalled, I say!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go figure out how to smuggle an assortment of cheeses, a full bottle of Grey Goose and another of Johnnie Walker Blue Label onto the plane with me. There’s no telling when they’ll let me in one of these lounges again. Wish me luck.

Japan is fantastic, part ichi

2007-02-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

I will have much to report about Japan when all is said and done. But before I'll have the time to devote to a proper recounting of this bombardment of the senses with all things so wonderfully Japanese, there is one thing above all else that has made a warm first impression on me. And it can be best summed up in three words:

Heated. Toilet. Seats.

They're everywhere. And oh my gooooooodness! My buns have never known anything so divine! If the Japanese ever intend for me to go back to my country, then they should probably stop serving me so much green tea with my meals. Because green tea leads to a full bladder which leads to at least half an hour in a bathroom taking full advantage of the seat. One can miss a plane in circumstances such as this!

Off to Kyoto for the weekend. Hmmm....I wonder if they have heated toilet seats there too...

PS - Sharon & Waspgoddess, the comb-over story you requested earlier is forthcoming as I saw the worst of offenders in the streets to Shinjuku the other day. I even managed to sneak a picture of the offense. Ooooh, just you wait!!

In sickness and in health, with one itty bitty testy exception

2007-02-05T22:26:00.000-08:00

A compendium of the most recent health issues I’ve been asked to address and/or examine by friends and family who I (for the most part and under normal circumstances) care greatly about:

Dochechka’s healing surgical incision. (Looks lovely, by the way.)

Abuelito’s lower back sebaceous cyst. (Not quite as lovely. Charming, I think, would be more fitting.)

Vinja’s through-and-through dog bite to the left ear. (Not kidding.) (I suppose that’s what he gets for ignoring all of my persistent medical advice to stop hanging bacon from his earlobes.)

Blossom’s local anesthetic needs for a very large tattoo. (She wanted to know if I considered it safe for her friend (a dentist) to do the anesthesia on her back. Considering there are no teeth on her back, I advised against this.) (Also not kidding.)

[Will remain unnamed]’s scrotal abscess. (I SO wish I was kidding.) (Thank goodness this consultation was solicited from long distance via the telephone. My advice to this individual: Uhhh…you should go see a doctor for that.)

This last encounter has inspired what will be the caveat to all future consultations by loved ones and acquaintances. I hate to have to do this, gentlemen, but from here on out, when someone asks for my advice, my agreement will require the acceptance of the following terms: Keep your boils, your scrotums, and your scrotal boils away from me. Sorry, ladies, I suppose to be fair, you’ll have to keep your ovaries away from me too.

In other non-scrotal news: I go to Japan tomorrow! Yippee!!

Negotiating the terms of our Pre-Shopping Agreement

2007-02-04T09:45:00.000-08:00

A recent instant message conversation between my dear Dochechka (still recovering from her back surgery) who minimizes bending by using this grabber to pick things up…

Me: Any interest in getting into a wheelchair and shopping with me this weekend?
Me: We could probably put a potty right underneath the seat so that you can just poop WHILE you shop

Dochechka: YESSSSS!! Take me AWAY!
Dochechka: Will you help me try pants on?

Me: No
Me: That’s what your grabber is for

Dochechka: Yeah, but I am NOT bringing it to the store!!
Dochechka: Duh

Me: Whatevs
Me: You’re no fun

Dochechka: What? You want me to bring my grabber??
Dochechka: Only if I get to grab your ass and boobs all the time

Me: Deal

Note 1: We love to shop. And, additionally, we love to be regular. Hence the references to poop.
Note 2: Yes. We are adults.

He uses his frequent flyer miles on me, so it MUST be love...

2007-02-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

As if I needed proof beyond the fact that he’s put up with my obnoxiousness for over two years...

Here’s yet another reason why I know The Brit digs me: He has to go to Japan on business next week. And I get to go too.* Airfare covered by ff miles. Hotel covered by [Insert name of The Brit’s job here].

Nuh uh!! you say??

Ya huh!! I say.

I’m not precisely sure what I did to deserve this, but I have a feeling it might have something to do with the fact that I can stuff 13 full-sized marshmallows in my mouth and still say “chubby bunny.” (It’s a little-known fact.) Oh, and the fact that I can shake it like a Polaroid picture.

Woo hoo! Japan! In three days!

* My usual surgical residency schedule wouldn’t permit me to just fly by the seat of my pants like this. But since I’m on a research schedule these days (until June 2008) and much of the work I do can be done via the series of tubes, I can. And it’s a good thing, because I have a big seat. One that, thanks to spandex, fits into these pants. And I do like to fly by them.

Ahhhh, the irony of it all....

2007-02-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

This story hit the New York Times the other day: Posing as a family, sex offenders stun a town

It's a lengthy article so here's the nutshell: A 29-year-old, named Neil H. Rodreick II, de-pubes himself and enrolls in school as a 12-year-old student. He does this with the help of Mr. Stiffler and Mr. Snow, both of whom Rodreick convinces he is a minor thus inspiring them to play along in the ruse as his grandfather and uncle. Together, they are one big, happy, disgusting family of illegally unregistered child sex offenders that, on their downtime, switch things up by doing each other. Until they eventually get found out.

Herein lies the irony…

The fact that the name of the town in which this whole thing went down is Surprise. That’s the actual name of the town. Surprise.

The fact that the school system that enrolled this 29-year-old 12-year-old is called the Imagine Charter School. Imagine that.

The fact that Mr. Stiffler’s name is almost too perfect for his role in this grotesque non-fiction. If I were writing this as a fictional story, the name Mr. Stiffler might have only just barely lost out to my first choice for his character: Mr. Boner.

The fact that Mr. Stiffler and Mr. Snow were “shocked” and “angry” to find out they’d been banging a perfectly legal 29-year-old the whole time. Rather than being relieved to be absolved of pedophilia charges, they were UPSET!!

I literally had to make sure I wasn’t reading the National Enquirer when Ratatat first emailed me this story. Absolutely. Horridly. Detestable.

I have my reasons for believing I'm lucky to be alive

2007-02-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

This is but one t-shirt on the floor in the messy room that is my head. I’ve been meaning to clean my room for a while now. So, surely, there will be more t-shirts to come, possibly even some undergarments…and who knows, maybe we’ll even find some of the unmatched socks that I previously thought had gone to sock purgatory. For more of this, periodically check for other posts in the category: “I have my reasons.”

This doesn’t really quite qualify as a Brush With Death. That’s another story entirely (forthcoming). Maybe we’ll just call this one my Graze With Death. It was the summer of 99. [Cue Bryan Adams song.] Cunning Mama (who at the time was certainly Cunning, but definitely not yet a Mama) and I we were traipsing around Europe together for a month. Having just graduated from college, we were giddy with our accomplishments…she’d just found a great job and I was about to start med school. And all of Europe…with it’s potential for divine gluttony in France, pharmaceutical experimentation in the Netherlands, bull running in Spain, and bull riding in Italy…was all but one Eurorail train ride away. Unfortunately, we were much too naïve and entirely too well behaved to take advantage of all this. Though we did manage to eat our weight in cheese (amaaaazing cheese) while in Paris, we completely avoided Amsterdam, passed up the bulls in Pamplona for a week in Mallorca, and were scared out of Rome after only two days by one too many close encounters with Italian pervs. Not that, if we were to go today, we’d eat any less cheese…but I get the feeling that a couple of groping Italians might now be considered an argument to stay IN Italy rather than to leave. You know. If Cunning Mama weren’t married with kids and I wasn’t dating The Brit, of course. I’m just saying.

Anyway, as the end of our trip approached, we looked back on our ‘adventure’ and came to the realization that we might as well have taken a chartered bus tour around Europe with our grandparents. Seriously, aside from our moped incident* outside the Pantheon, we had no outlandish stories to bring home as souvenirs. We needed to do something exciting, something rash (but that hopefully wouldn’t give us one), something worthy of a centerfold spread in the scrap book, something that would cause my mother to gasp with displeasure (she did this quite well and throughout my adolescence), and we needed to do it fast.

So, I cut my hair. To just below my chin. MAN, were people gonna shit their pants when they saw this!!

Well, we suspected that little else could top the thrill of my new haircut (which, in retrospect, made me look like a mushroom head), but we decided to give it one last try before heading back home. Hence our trip to Balmer’s Adventure World Hostel in Interlaken, Switzerland. In our guide book, Balmer’s bragged an orgy of extreme sport delights…things like sky diving, bungee cord jumping, canyoning. What was canyoning? we said. Ahhh, who cares. Let’s do it. But then there was the small matter of deciding when to do it. We’d arrived just in time to make the afternoon trip out that day. But did we want to do that? (Cunning Mama’s suggestion.) Or did we want to relax that day and do the canyoning the next? (My suggestion.) We hesitated at the front desk when making our adventure reservation, likely almost entirely out of a good girl brand of caution…much in the same way a young girl whose had the concept of abstinence pummeled into her head (“IF YOU HAVE SEX BEFORE YOU GET MARRIED YOU WILL SURELY BURN IN HELL”) must hesitate at her first opportunity to have premarital sex. (I would imagine…you know, hypothetically, of course.)

After a bit of back and forth, we went with Cunning Mama’s choice and signed up to do canyoning that same day. So, later that afternoon, I tucked my new do into a cute little helmet and somehow managed to squeeze my bum into the tourniquet that was my rented wetsuit. Cunning Mama did the same (only with significantly less squeezing). And off we went into the canyon with two guides and several other tourists. Having no clue as to what canyoning even entailed, we just followed the instructions handed out to us by our guides. We swam in the shallow waters of the riverbed when they told us to swim. We slid down the slippery rocks that they told us to slide down. Belly flopped into shallow pools from 10 to 15 ft heights when they told us to belly flop. Abseiled down cliffs alongside small waterfalls when they told us to abseil. I didn’t understand the need for it when we reached the bottom of the canyon any more than I did when we started out at the top of the canyon. But, alas! It was Fun! It was Exciting! It was Rash! (And unfortunately, there was a bit of one, along with some chafing, due to the wetsuit). And surely, had we actually taken a bus tour with our grandparents, the bus would NOT have stopped at Balmer's. It was Perfect!

We spent the whole next day, which incidentally was a bit rainy, flouncing around Interlaken with some of our new canyoning friends, proud of how brave we were to have attempted AND succeeded at such a risky, albeit chaperoned, adventure. Bravo us! We walked back to Balmer’s from town late in the afternoon, all the while discussing how we’d organize our scrap book’s canyoning centerfold. We arrived to a hostel that had been turned inside out. Everyone seemed to be outside rather than inside, almost as if someone had let out an obnoxiously loud room-clearing fart. And it pervaded the entire building. Only, instead of laughing about it. People were crying. Hysterically.

That afternoon, the very afternoon that I’d originally wanted to go canyoning, there’d been a flash flood in the canyon. A storm had come in and eighteen tourists along with three guides, all from Balmer’s, died in the flood. It was shocking, horrific and truly terrible. And it was exactly the kind of news that would make its way to my mother’s television set and cause her to have a massive myocardial infarction. Forget the displeased gasp. I called her immediately and told her that we were ok.

It was a sad note on which to end our trip. Though there was the small, selfish internal prayer of thanks for not having gone canyoning that day but the day prior instead. I came back feeling lucky to be alive. And I swore that I’d never take my life for granted. Ever again.**

*Neither one of us having ridden a moped ever in our lives, for some yet explained reason, we thought it a good idea to rent one for sightseeing around Rome. The guy at the shop, after a cursory glance at our American driver’s licenses, started the moped for us and we were off! The first problem arose when it came time for us to turn the moped on ourselves. Long story short: We turned it on with the back wheel in contact with the ground (ummm…bad!) after which the moped flew out into the busiest intersection in Rome and petered out in the middle of the street. Thankfully, we were not on it when this happened. Silly Americans.

** This was short-lived, as soon thereafter, I was subjected to hours and hours of medical school lectures, several of which were only slightly more enticing than the prospect of jabbing my writing utensil through my right eyeball.

Airing out the Dick

2007-01-30T19:15:00.000-08:00

Last time I checked, I didn’t have a penis, a pair of testicles, or the innate need to constantly scratch and adjust said penis or testicles. So, as long as that’s clear, we can all rest assured that I am very much NOT a man.

Please excuse the seemingly unnecessary and rather brash declaration of my sex. It’s not usually something I have to announce outright as I tend to do things that make it fairly obvious that I am quite rightly in possession of a pair of X chromosomes. Things like: swoon, wear corsets, shield my delicate skin from the sun with a parasol, stay indoors during times of menstruation (so as not to offend the menfolk), and demurely play with the ringlet that always falls into my right eye. So I suppose I should cut Mr. Representative from The Particular Professional Risk Management Company who sent me a letter recently some slack. Since he hasn’t actually ever seen me. You know, he probably just tapped into some database of MD’s and assumed that I couldn’t possibly be a girl. A girl doctor! Heavens no! Must be some sort of typo…I’ll just go ahead and fix that. This must be what Mr. Representative from the aforementioned Particular Professional Risk Management Company was thinking when he addressed the envelope and the letter within to me.

This explains how I was the recipient of a letter addressed to a Dr. Richard [MyLastName]. Mr. Representative is trying to sell me professional liability insurance coverage specifically for health care professionals complete with “top notch legal counsel and toll-free risk management consultation.” Hmm. Sounds pretty good. But I fear I won’t be eligible once he finds out I’m: [whispered] a girl.

Here’s the best part. Wanna know what Mr. Representative’s first name is? Richard.

I’m thinking Mr. Dick Representative will shortly be in receipt of a letter from a Dr. Richard [MyLastName] in which I’ve peed on the stationary.*

While standing up, of course.

* Don’t be silly. If Scarlett O’Hara wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it.

WTF??

2007-01-29T23:00:00.000-08:00

You know those moments when you feel old? Those moments when you walk down the street, you see a barely post-pubescent girl who clearly hasn’t learned her limits with mascara or eye shadow (or lip liner) quite yet…you look at her purple tights under her unflatteringly short denim mini-skirt, her white tank top/black bra ensemble…and the pink camouflage suit jacket with which she’s topped it all off. And you think to yourself, “Ohhhhh, that’s what’s in these days???” Either that or “Does this child have a mother?? And if so, should I call her?” Moments like those kinda make you feel like the days between you, a girdle, and some daily fiber supplements are numbered.

Well, I had one of those moments recently. Only not with a 15 year old who was so Desperately Seeking Susan (at least not today), but with the use of the English language.

I was sitting in my office at work the other day. And, in with the overwhelming smell of hospital-grade disinfectant, wafted the sound of one of the interns saying (in a tone that is soooooo stereotypically Californian), “Ohhhhh Emmmmm Geeeeee!!!!”

Did she really just…?? Yes. Yes she did. She really did just say the letters “O”, “M”, and “G” instead of just saying “Oh My God.” She didn’t text message it. Didn’t IM it. She spoke it. Out loud.

I stopped just short of booking myself a nice room in a geriatric living community that has a daily domino hour in the rec room when I realized that I must not be completely out of touch. I mean, afterall, I DID know what she meant by OMG. Do I get partial youth credits for that?

Sure. Why not. And while I still have a few days left in me before I trip on my slippers and break my hip, I figure if I can’t beat em, join em. Right? What the fuck have I got to lose? Or rather, WTF?

No. Wait. Let me do this properly. Double-u teeeeeee efffffffff?

Huh?? OUCH!! Awwwww!! Woohoo!!

2007-01-28T23:08:00.000-08:00

All in one day too! It’s an exciting life I lead, I know.

Huh??
This is what I thought when I woke up yesterday morning at 0430 in my bed, with the sweaty imprint of my ABSITE study book on my face, lights still on, and no Brit in bed next to me. If he wasn’t in bed at this hour, there was only one other place he could be. And, indeed, there he was: Slumped over on the couch, fast asleep, bathed in the glow of the TV, jacket still on after having come back from a late night of birthday celebrating, with an empty wine glass in his hands. Empty, not because he’d drank all the wine, but because he’d spilled all the wine. All over the couch. I swear, at times like these, he’s lucky he’s got cute dimples. Back to bed we went. Until a couple hours later when I had to be up for my test…

OUCH!!
Little did I know that I’d manage a first degree burn to the right thigh before an 8am exam. But hey, I get a lot done in the mornings. Why not. So there I was at 7:40 in the am, parked on a hill outside the test center. The consequence of trying to close one’s car door while on a hill while carrying five things (one of which was an orange and the other of which was my thermos full of hot tea) with just two hands goes a little something like this: Juggle items in hands while trying to close car door with bum. Drop orange. Orange begins to roll down hill. Chase orange. Bend over to grab it before it rolls under another car. Spill boiling hot tea all over right thigh. Howl “OUUUUUUUUUCH!!!” at the top of lungs while dancing around. Drop orange all over again. [Cue Benny Hill Show theme song.] (Really, he couldn’t have played it any better.) Well done me.

Awwwww!!
This is what I thought when I settled into my seat for the exam and read the good luck card The Brit had strategically placed on my car’s dashboard for me to find. It warmed my heart (and, incidentally, the burn on my right thigh). It also made me laugh…because he’d clearly written the first ¾ of it while sober, and the last ¼ of it after coming back from celebrating. (The sloppier handwriting and the fact that he misspelled his own name in the signing of it kind of gave it away.) It was truly lovely, though, and just the vote of confidence I needed before taking a 5-hour multiple choice standardized exam. Well done dear Brit.

Woohoo!!
This is what I thought as, just a few hours after finishing the exam, The Brit and I were driving up the coastal highway for a weekend of relaxing at a friend’s beach home. Suffice it to say: Much good food was eaten. Much needed sleep was slept. Many sweet nothings were whispered. Much walking was done along the beach. And all wine was consumed rather than spilled on the couch. And thank goodness for that since I hardly think the owner of the beach home, and the lovely white leather couch within it, would find The Brit’s dimples quite as charming as I do.

In the name of Academia

2007-01-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

Werner Herzog (a German film maker who is particularly nutty in a deliciously entertaining sort of way), recently said “Academia is completely devoid of all human pathos…and should thus be avoided at all costs.” This made me chuckle heartily at the time because I could certainly think of more than a handful of academians in my med school experience and my surgical training to whom this so completely applies. (Still can.) They make learning unfun. But for every tight-assed bore out there, there are multiple more charismatic and personable academians. And I like to think that, in the medical world, we have the Charismatics in Academia to thank for cures to cancer, successful vaccinations, and among many other things, we hope, the training of good surgeons.

At least this is what I tell myself in the late hours of the night and the wee dark hours of the morning, when I am up reading and studying, twitching from a noxious combination of nearly lethal doses of caffeine and surgical trivia. This has been my plight for the last several weeks, all in preparation for the annual American board of surgery in-training exam. Every general surgery resident in the country (even those on their research hiatus like myself) has to take this exam. And it’s always the last Saturday of January. Which, just in case you’re too appropriately sleepy at this small hour of the morning to realize, is tomorrow.

So, permit me this pause in obnoxiousness just for today. Wish me luck. Think good surgical thoughts for me tomorrow morning between the hours of 8am and 1pm PST. And we shall return to the usual, and only slightly less caffeinated, shenanigans post-exam.

You should still respect your elders

2007-01-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

My dearest, beloved Brit -

It is your birthday. And as we cross this annual threshold where you catch up to me in age (and I therefore forfeit the ability to tell you to respect your elders for the next six months), I feel a little celebratory expression of love is in order here. I know. I profess my adoration for you all the time. But this year, I wanted to do something special. Like parasail over the city of San Francisco, naked except for hot pink legwarmers, with a long banner attached to my sail that reads “THE BRIT HAS THE CUTEST 29 YEAR OLD DIMPLES IN THE WHOLE WORLD.” But I looked into it, and that turned out to be a bit pricey…and let’s face it, the city of SF has seen enough ass in its time. (And besides, hot pink legwarmers are so last season.) I’ve decided, instead, to profess my love for you by broadcasting it to the world via this blog. And by ‘the world’, I mean ‘my five readers’ (three of which are my Mamacusa, my Abuelito, and one friend from high school). But it’s the thought that counts, right?

It’s been, what? 2.25 years now since we met up for dinner that one night? You remember? The one where we had a lovely meal, we enjoyed some intellectual conversation, then you drank a few too many Chimays, I drove you back to your house, and we made out for a while, until you passed out (as evidenced to me by your snoring into my cleavage)? Yeah. That was a great first date. You recovered nicely, though, when you made me that spectacular dinner of Butter lettuce, Persimmon, Feta, & Hazelnut Salad, followed by the Moroccan-Spiced Cornish Game Hens with Roasted Beet Mashed Potatoes and Yogurt-Mint Sauce, and, of course, the ever-so-unforgettable Winter-Spiced Molten Chocolate Lava Cake with Rum-Ginger Ice Cream. Oh, that Chocolate lava cake…with its warm, mushy, uncooked, chocolatey-licious center. Mmmmm. That’s when I decided to keep you. And I’m glad I did, because over time, I’ve realized that, not only can you cook consistently well, but you very likely have a mild case of undiagnosed narcolepsy…as I’ve witnessed you fall asleep while drinking wine, eating popcorn, and taking a wee. (Though, thankfully, not all at the same time.) So, in other words, since you clearly can’t help it, consider the narcoleptic first date episode long forgiven. (Feel free to make another chocolate molten lava cake though, I’ll forgive you all over again.)

After 2.25 years of dating, I can’t say we’re without our problems. Problems which have mostly to do with your inexplicable love of movie soundtracks, your dislike of coffee and tea (you’re an embarrassment to your Queen), and the fact that you live in a world where you seem to think that everything, short of driving down to LA to pick up some milk, will only take 20 minutes (that, with your sense of time, would probably take an estimated 30 minutes). There is also the issue of your forgetfulness. You’ve forgotten wallets in taxis. Laptops at the airport security check point (which you realized after about an hour of being in the air). Either you’re putting on a charade right now so that I’ll never think you responsible enough to care for our future children (in which case, wisely played!), or we really need to figure out how to create a system by which, when you step outside of three feet of your possessions, your nose will start blinking. (And if we succeed at this, I think we could patent it and retire with our earnings!) The next issue, that of your Gift of Gab, I am still kinda on the fence about. On the one hand, the fact that you can, as CruJones once put it “make conversation with a stuffed moosehead,” comes in handy. For instance, I can leave your side at a work party where you know no one and trust that you’ll entertain yourself (and likely others) sufficiently. On the other hand, for the love of GOD!! Do you ever come up for air?? (On the upside, you’ve only got a little ways to go before you can beat the world record holder for longest soliloquy.) Lastly, and perhaps most seriously, there is the matter of your level-headedness. You really are entirely too reasonable. This, I find, is particularly troubling. And if you weren’t so friggin’ reasonable, this would be the root of what would be most of our arguments. But since we don’t argue, we’ll never know. Allow me to offer a hypothetical example:

Me: OH MY GOD!!! Coño!! Did you see how that asshole just cut us off! I mean, who does he think he is? Some super rich famous person who is above the laws of traffic??

You: Well, maybe his pregnant wife is in the back seat and her water just broke and they need to get to the hospital urgently.

Me: Oh for fuck’s sake! MAYBE! But if so, he’s endangering the lives of many, including that of his unborn child, by driving like a maniac! What about that, huh? Huh?

You: You’re right. He probably could stand to be a little more careful.

See? That’s exactly the kind of thing you’d say to NOT get a rise out of me. And it’s just entirely too reasonable. I really wish you’d stop that. It’s annoying. I’m far more accustomed to the Cuban way of doing things. Like the time some guy cut my dad off on a single lane highway. My dad sped up just to cut him off while flipping him off with his left hand outside the driver’s side window. Then that guy cut my dad off again and flipped him off in a similar manner. Then my dad sped up again, cut him off, while flipping him off. With both middle fingers. While on a curve. That’s the kind of passionate angst I’m lookin’ for here. Is that too much to ask for? :)

Problems aside, I do think we make a good team. I find the fact that you are always warm, though a strong argument for the theory that you are not of this world but instead from the planet of Astrometria, quite convenient for me. Since my fingers, toes and nose are always freezing. (My Dad says our family comes from a long line of dogs and I think he might be onto something there.) The fact that you delight in culinary experimentation is a plus as well. Though my ass has gotten bigger since we started dating, so cancel out the benefit of your cooking. Though, speaking of my ass, you do like that, and you find the dance I have to do to squeeze it into every single godforsaken pair of pants I own absolutely adorable. So, bonus points for that. You tolerate my gas on the principle that I was raised in a family where farting wasn’t an embarrassment, it was a contest. Though, since you’re no stranger to dropping a silent-but-deadly bomb yourself, that cancels itself out as well. You scratch my back for me, even when I’m too lazy to walk the two steps needed to get the back scratcher that you bought me. More bonus points for you. (And thanks, by the way.)

What pushes you over the edge into the range of having so many points that you have unlimited rollover points (all of which carry over at the end of each month) is this: You’re the brand of good looking that comes from having outgrown an adolescence of chubbiness. This is the unaware-of-your-good-looks brand. (Which is the best kind.) You don't just tolerate what I do for a living, you love what I do, and ask me about it all the time out of genuine interest and curiousity. And, perhaps most importantly, you always understand when my job makes me late for plans we've made. You are thoughtful and generous, not just to the people within your circle of family and friends, but to strangers as well. You volunteer your time at food banks and homeless shelters, travel to places like Thailand to do tsunami relief work and Louisiana to help rebuild houses leveled by Hurricane Katrina. You believe, as I wholeheartedly do, in the power of one individual to make a strong impact, change the world in some way, make a difference. And you want to be that person. (Which I fully support. Just as long as it doesn’t interfere with our sex life.) Soooo, basically you’re like Mother Teresa. Only alive and much younger. And hotter. And with a penis.

And for some reason, you love me with the enthusiasm and loyalty of a proud, rabid soccer mom. Minus the rabies, the obnoxious blow horn, and the fluorescent signage that reads, “My daughter will kick your ASS!” Oh, and more like a boyfriend than a mom. But you know what I mean. You seem to think I’m great, which makes loving you waaaaaaaay more fun than loving Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block those long, difficult years ago. He never answered my many love letters, which makes the love we shared, Joey and I, the unrequited kind. Whereas with you…you always answer my love letters. And that makes me a very lucky girl. Ahhh, sweet, sweet requited love. Suck on THAT Joey!

So, happy 29th birthday, my dear Brit. I love you and look forward to celebrating many, many more birthdays with you. (If you don’t tire of scratching my back for me first. Or of having my cold hands shoved down your pants.) (Or of my obnoxiousness.)

Con amor, muchos besos, y un pincho en el culito,
La Cubana Gringa

PS – No, we cannot have the Grand Suite from Star Wars played at our wedding. Maybe at the reception. And only on the condition that I get “I'll be loving you (forever)”
and “Hanging Tough.”

We share in this relationship

2007-01-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

With his mouth still full from his last bite and an incriminatory grain of Mexican rice hanging from his lip by a pedicle of cheesy refried bean paste, The Queen’s Own, feeling the warmth of my glare, looks at me and says, “Was this your leftover burrito in the fridge?”

“Yes. Thanks for asking,” thinking he’d pick up on the sarcasm.

Blissfully unaware, he continues to chew. Chomp. Chew. Chew. Chew. Notices there’s something on his lip. Picks it off, looks at it, recognizes it as edible, then adds it to the contents of his mouth. Chew. Chew.

“Oh, and, no thanks. I didn’t want anymore of my burrito anyway.”

Chew. Chew. “Huh? Oh. Good.”

Because traditional stuffed animals were starting to get boring

2007-01-23T05:20:00.000-08:00

If I weren’t as crass and unrefined as I am, these little velvety numbers would likely offend my delicate sensibilities.

Thank goodness my sensibilities are far from delicate.

But really, even I have to ask the prudish question: What WILL they think of next? Adorable, plush, lifelike excrement toys?

Oh wait. They’ve already done that too.

Step ASIDE Cindy Crawford!!!

2007-01-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

Alright. So let’s just forget for a moment that I’m like four feet shorter than her and have a thigh circumference that is conceivably equivalent to that of her waist. Oh, and the fact that I haven’t made millions in a career based entirely on my stunning good looks. Oh, and also the fact that I don’t have an ex-husband whose been shamed publicly for having been allegedly caught with a gerbil in his rectum. Forget all that. There is one thing Cindy and I now share in common: A curiously sultry mole that hovers closely over the left vermillion border of our lips. Yessssss. You didn’t know I had one? Well, yes. Yes I do. And though I could still stand to lose a little holiday weight, I think I’m going to go ahead and have some head shots taken of me and then send them out to a few agencies. You know, just in case there’s a demand for a short, pear-shaped Cuban-American model with a zit near her left upper lip that, when topped off with a little dark brown eyeliner, passes for a pretty decent mole. I’m feelin’ lucky.

A few too many combovers for my taste, but overall, a hootinanny of a good time

2007-01-20T08:08:00.000-08:00

There is one solid conclusion I was able to make after last night’s symphonic performance of “Music from the Big Screen.” And that is this: the only others who seem to share The Brit’s bizarre passion for movie scores are those who are but one cardiac pacemaker misfire away from death. As we took our seats in the auditorium, I looked around, noting octogenarian after octogenarian (after octogenarian), and realized we were, by far, the youngest in attendance. Which was fine. It was quite good fun to hang out with the old geezers, actually. We all enjoyed a selection of Max Steiner’s music from Gone with the Wind followed by Maurice Jarre’s Overture and Suite from Lawrence of Arabia. Then, at intermission, we all got up to adjust our hearing aids, change our leaky Depends, and enjoy a digestive. Following the break, we were dazzled by Elmer Bernstein’s Suite from The Magnificent Seven, Bernard Herrmann’s Suite from Vertigo, and Howard Shore’s Suite from The Lord of the Rings. During that last suite, The Brit, having behaved for nearly the entire performance and now entirely incapable of containing himself, went ahead and conducted the symphony from his seat. After the music stopped and all the hullabaloo and hootinanny settled down (old people terms for excitement), we decided to make an appearance at the after-party.* You know, kinda like a post-Oscars party, just without all the celebrities. And instead of doing shots off Scarlett Johansen’s chest or Paris Hilton’s twiggy thighs, we just played several rounds of hard-core Bingo. But not before soaking our dentures, changing out of our 18-hour girdles, and taking our evening round of medications with some nice prune juice.

* And by “after-party” I mean a very nice restaurant in the Mission District where The Brit and I enjoyed a lovely dinner for two. And for the record, the music really was spectacular.

The Brit has died and gone to heaven

2007-01-19T06:21:00.000-08:00

So, one of the things that I love about The Brit (and by “love” I mean “can’t comprehend anymore than I can comprehend why it is that I have more ass than I know what to do with and yet not nearly big enough boobs”) is that he adores, ADORES, movie scores and soundtracks. And by “adores” I mean…

He can tell you exactly what part of which Lord of the Rings movie corresponds to the part in the score when the flutes swell and the cymbals crash. (In case you’re wondering, it’s the part when Viggo Mortensen, that delicious hunk of man-meat, makes out with Liv Tyler. That slut.)

He can identify the composer for just about any movie before the opening credits are half-through. And when he does, he proceeds to tell you every other movie that composer did the music for. Which is useful information. You know, in case Jeopardy calls.

He considers it fun to watch movie trailers and guess which movie score they borrowed the music from to make the trailer. And when he figures it out, he shouts it out as if the correct answer was the only thing between him and a million dollars in prize money.

He considered moving down to LA to pursue a career in movie sound but just couldn’t bring himself to get the size double D breast implants and gossamer blond hair extensions that one needs to fit in down there. That’s my boy. True to himself.

He’d probably willingly give up beer for the rest of his days if it meant that the score of Star Wars could be the soundrack of his life. This is saying a lot, for his love of beer runs as deep as the force is strong within Luke Skywalker.

Anyway, the reason why I’m even mentioning this is because we’ve got tickets to go to The Brit’s real live Wet Dream tonight. In other words, we’ve got tickets to go to a symphony that is performing “Music from the Big Screen.” Don’t look at me! I didn’t buy them for him! Vinja did! THANKS Vinja! (And by “thanks” I mean, “What in God’s name were you THINKING??”*) So anyway, you’ll understand why I’m considering catheterizing The Brit’s urinary bladder and attaching a collection bag to his leg, since he would otherwise run the very sizable risk of wetting himself from the excitement of it all if I don’t. And besides, this way he can drink all the beer he wants at intermission and won’t have to get up for a potty break!

* Dramatized for humorous purposes. Really, thanks. Very sweet of you to get him a gift that he really will enjoy. And then talk about excitedly. Nonstop. For the next several months. Thanks.

Note: While I truthfully do not share The Brit's love of movie scores, I do enjoy seeing him enjoy them. It's like watching a kid on Christmas morning. Every time we go to the movies. Which makes movies that much more fun. And by "fun" I mean "dorky." Just kidding. Fun. Really.

Because I do so enjoy performing rectal exams...

2007-01-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

I hesitate, when I’ve just met someone, to tell him or her that I’m a physician. Even when I am asked flat out what I do for a living. Because the response I tend to get usually involves a look of surprise (which, in principle, could be taken as either a compliment or an insult*) and a verbal response somewhere in the ballpark of, “Wow, uhhh…you must be, like, really smart then, huh?”**

No. Actually. Dumb as a box of hair. I’ve just risen to the top by honing my blow job skills and then demonstrating them on all the right people.

I usually almost immediately regret saying this out loud. Not because it doesn’t amuse me. It does. (Every time.) (Have I mentioned that my middle name is Crass?) But only because if I had to say it in the first place…the conversation was in dire straights from the get-go. I mean, honestly, what kind of response does a question like that deserve anyway?

But sometimes, I encounter a person, as I did recently, who is genuinely and wholeheartedly interested in knowing about my job. And by genuinely and wholeheartedly interested I mean unequivocally obsessed with ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, Nip Tuck, and all the clever, and exceptionally good looking forensic pathologists (of which, in real life, there are NONE) on all those CSI shows. And they want details. Details like: What kinds of surgeries do I do? Doesn’t all the blood make me sick? How do I handle all the death? Do all the doctors really make hot monkey love in the dustbin closet or in an empty ICU bed like they do on Grey’s Anatomy? How did I decide to go into surgery anyway?

I always enjoy giving the answer to the last question first. I tell them about the real life story of me, in med school, in the impressionable days of my fourth year. I was doing a surgical pathology rotation*** and the attending I was working alongside was processing an abdominoperineal resection specimen. He removed the fresh slab of tissue from the bucket, still warm from having just been resected from it’s owner, and examined the hard, circumferential mass of rectal cancer within it. While he did the standard pathological assessment, he and I nonchalantly chatted away, much in the same way one does with their hairdresser while getting their hair cut. We touched on topics like why I had chosen to apply for a general surgery residency and why he, years ago, chose a profession in pathology. Now, forget for a moment that my attending was clearly NOT cutting my hair, but instead processing a specimen that was inclusive of a patient’s rectum, their rectal cancer, and their anus complete with a small cuff of skin and one stray, stubborn hemorrhoid. Let’s just focus on the fact that it was at this moment he expressed that his reasons for going into the non-clinical field of pathology (as opposed to the clinical field of surgery) were primarily because he never wanted to have to do another rectal exam**** again ever in his life. I paused for a moment as I watched him stretch the specimen out in front of him, holding it in the way one would a telescope, the hairy anus end within inches of his eyes. Then I said, “Riiiiiiiiight. So how did that work out for ya?”

It was that moment that confirmed why I’d much rather work with patients, real live people, than just their tissue. Mostly so that, years later, some obnoxious medical student couldn’t just waltz into my office and totally debunk my reasons for who I’d become.

If I still have an audience by the end of this story, which this particular time I did, then I give them a real treat. I tell them that, yes… [Cue 70’s porno music here.] In the small, dark, cramped, sweaty corners of the hospital…it’s all doctor on doctor, doctor on nurse, nurse on nurse, medical student on doctor, nurse on medical student. TWENTY. FOUR. SEVEN. It’s a proper brothel for all intensive purposes. Which means that it really is like Grey’s Anatomy. Cuz Lord knows all those emesis basins and colostomies just make us all SO insuppressibly hot.

* For example. A Complimentary look of surprise, if it had a mouth, would say: “My goodness, you look so young to be a doctor!” whereas the Insulting look of surprise would say: “You? You’re a doctor? Yeah…and I’m the fairy godmother.” I’ve been on the receiving end of both.
** I know. Can you believe anyone would really say that? Not to be sexist in any way, but seriously, only men have ever said this to me. Women tend to say something more along the lines of “You GO girl!”
*** In Surgical Pathology, the pathologist examines the gross (visible to the naked eye) and the microscopic appearance of all the specimens that come out of the OR: the lump of breast cancer that came out of a patient, the ruptured appendix that came out of another, etc.
****Meaning a Digital Rectal Exam performed on a live person to check for things like prostate or rectal cancer.

Lemony freshness is overrated

2007-01-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

I normally love lemons.

Citrus flavors in my food...yum.
Lemonade...me gusta.
Lemons in general...I can eat them like oranges.

But I've decided, after much, much bathing, that I just can't get into the lemon-scented soap I got for Christmas. I can't dissociate the fragrance from the artificially scented cleaning and polishing products that are out on the market. (The very cleaning products that I had to give up my Saturday cartoons for all of the livelong weekends of my childhood so that we could have sparkling clean toilets and shiny end tables.) (Who makes cleaning day Saturday anyway?) (I'm not bitter.) Like a Pavlovian dog, I step into the shower, get flooded with the overwhelming lemony freshness of that bar of soap and have to stop myself from polishing my tiles. (I simply don't have time for that every morning. Sorry, Mamacusa, I know that would make you proud.) Worse yet, outside of the shower, I feel that I run the very serious risk of being unwillingly slammed face-down onto an antique table and rubbed from side to side until the cherry wood finish is sufficiently buffed and I can see my bruised, battered reflection in it. Mistaken for Lemon Pledge by a well-meaning housewife.

It could happen.

Doesn't the month of April make YOU horny?

2007-01-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

No? It doesn’t? Yes it does. Admit it.

I have reason to believe that April makes everyone, but especially Catholics, horny.

Now, in practice, I tend to be more of an evidence-based kinda gal when forming opinions or making decisions. Everyone knows that anecdotal evidence is biased and inaccurate. Por ejemplo…

Evidence based: I generally don’t drink carbonated beverages because studies have shown that the caffeine and phosphorus in these drinks have a deleterious effect on calcium absorption, contributing to, among other things, osteoporosis.

Anecdotally based: I don’t like to drink soda because I think it makes my ass fatter than it already is. (Which it does.) (But that’s not the point here.)

The point is that the former is fact-based. The latter just depends on which mirror I’m looking at. (And for the record, in those moments of weakness when I want to justify just one soda, I simply slip down to my bedroom where our full length mirror tells me sweet, sweet lies.)

All digressions aside, I have evidence to believe, based on a Case Study, n=7, performed at my reputable and highly academic institution (AKA, my house), that April, along with it’s bountiful showers, brings with it the overwhelming urge to do the nasty. Without protection (hence the Catholics being implicated here). Which then results in impregnation. And thus, the birth of a child, the fruit of one’s loins, say…in January. And thus, the fact that EVERY-FRIGGIN’-BODY’S BIRTHDAY IS IN JANUARY. Ok. Not everybody’s. Just Abuelito’s. Abuelita’s. The Love Muscle’s. Captain Organico’s. The Brit’s. Daddio’s. And Homeslice’s. (I’d like to point out that some of the above are NOT the offspring of latinos (rumored to be particularly amorous…I believe it is said in certain circles that we “hump like bunnies”) and that this n of 7 is made up of people from all over the world. Making it a rigorous, and I feel, more accurate Case Study.)

So there you have it. Proof. That April is some sort of provocative aphrodisiac in and of itself. I, for one, will be using birth control. But just beware. Without protection, you’re forever damning the rest of us to bankruptcy during the month of January. (And after Christmas, when we’re already broke as it is.)

Horny (Catholic) bastards.

The minuses of being not-so-drunk and kinda smart

2007-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

At a bar last night...

“So whatcha got in that murse of yours?” Murse = my pet name for the type of man-purse my friend was clutching.

“Uh…nuthin’, you know, just like, the kidney I’m going to need transplanted after tonight,” he slurred back at me over the two drinks he had in his hands.

“Um, actually, you’re probably more likely to need a liver transplant after tonight.”

“DAMMIT! I HATE hanging out with people who actually know what they’re talking about! Chicks like you SO ruin my game!”

Recipe for hotness

2007-01-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

Do you have one of these? No? Well, if you’re hopelessly single and clamoring for a better first impression gimmick…I think I just found the solution for you.

The Grabber 2000.

Strange. Curious. Provocative. I know. I never knew these existed until I went to go see my Dochechka. Being blessed with a Russian brand of foresight, just prior to her recent back surgery, she preemptively purchased a Grabber 2000 so as to minimize having to bend when reaching for things in the post-op recovery period. I was intrigued when I witnessed her use her shiny new go-go-gadget arm for the first time. With cat-like speed and agility she used it to skillfully turn the ground level space heater up to high. (Though, admittedly, intrigue did turn to annoyance when I witnessed her use it to dig out the tub of chocolate macaroons I’d strategically hidden from her in the bottom cupboard.Dammit, I thought I'd have those all to myself. A nose like a beagle that one has!) But above all, I realized the Grabber’s potential utility for say, a first or second date: a gentle caress of the face…perhaps the loving relocation of a stray hair out of your date’s eyes…or better yet, a subtle ass-grab. Endless possibilities for those who are fumbling through the early days of physical awkwardness. I mean really, what better way to communicate that you want to feel someone up than to do it first with a part-aluminum/part-plastic member? Brilliant. Home base never looked so good, huh?

I mentioned this to Dochechka and told her that her Grabber 2000 would complement her Push Cart on Wheels (circa 1970) quite nicely. (She really does have one of those.) With these two items, not only will she be able to compete with all the fierce, old ladies in Chinatown, she’ll soon be beatin’ all the men away with a stick! Well, a Grabber, actually.

If I were 13...

2007-01-11T07:12:00.000-08:00

I’d have been mortified, embarrassed to the point of digging a hole and burying myself right inside that crowded coffee shop, when Mamacusa and Abuelito began stuffing fistfuls of our unused napkins into Mamacusa’s oversized purse. We’d sat down and enjoyed a lovely round of hot cocoa and coffee to get out of the fog one day over the Christmas holidays, and just as we were about to leave, I witnessed The Napkin Snatch.

“What are you DOING?”

“They’re just going to throw them away anyway! We might as well take them! They’re PERFECTLY GOOD napkins!” Mamacusa said this, eyes on the napkins the entire time. Clearly she was concentrating, probably making sure to place the napkins in their designated, specially built-in napkin compartment within her mammoth purse.

Surely if we’d have just left them there in a neat little stack, the next customer might have used them. I thought this at the time. But Mamacusa was so swift (clearly she’d done this before) that the deal was already done. I chuckled as we left the coffee shop. What would have killed me in my adolescence merely amuses me now. I must be getting old. Before I know it, I’ll be wearing a sun visor, high-waisted, elastic-banded jeans pulled to just under my armpits, black socks and white sandals. With Velcro. So I don’t have to bother with those tricky little sandal buckles. And when the teenagers laugh at me, I’ll just hiss at them and throw one of my carefully saved Starbucks napkins at them. Surely, this is just days away.

By the time the holidays were over and my family went back home, they’d harvested napkins from just about every place we’d stopped off, eaten at, or even contemplated ordering something from. Little, thin, folded, papery souvenirs of our jaunts around the city of San Francisco. Hey. They’re PERFECTLY GOOD napkins!

So, you'll understand when I say that I wasn’t the least bit surprised when, in my daily phone conversation with Mamacusa yesterday, Mamacusa told me what she and Abuelito were about to go do now. I could hear the hum of Mamacusa’s car in the background. They were headed to Costco. Not because they particularly needed to buy bulk quantities of toilet paper or olive oil. (Or napkins.) Instead, they were making the trip just so that they could fill up on all the free samples of food Costco always gives away. This at Abuelito’s suggestion…you know, so Mamacusa wouldn’t have to bother with cooking dinner that night.

I love my family.

to Cuba with love... (part 3)

2007-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

It’s one of those SF winter mornings. Thick, ominous, low-lying fog…threatening to blanket our day, deny us our light.

Except today…

Here comes the sun.

I watch from our balcony as the sun, using its rays as arms, casts off the city’s blanket.

And I smile. I feel warm in the middle of January. Warm knowing that we* succeeded in making someone who is sad momentarily happy.

The gift made it to Cuba on Jan 6^th.** El Día de Los Reyes. How fitting.

* My family, myself, Dochechka, The Brit, and my dear, dear, traveling friends who took the challenge of having to hunt down my family with little more than the phone number of a neighbor. An INCORRECT phone number, they discovered.

** In order to know what the hell I’m rambling on about, you have to have already read this, this and this.

Pics of this morning's sunrise coming soon.

I will beat you every time

2007-01-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer #1: This post is not for the squeamish. If your delicate sensibilities preclude your tolerance of frank references to saliva, mucous, vomit, bile, excrement, urine, blood, semen, pus, or any other bodily fluid for that matter, you may want to skip along to a more light-hearted post like this one or this one. I know, I know. You may THINK you want to challenge yourself just this once. But seriously. What follows is considered by many to be truly gross. As the t-shirt that my brother gifted me with a few years back reads: trust me, i’m a doctor.

Disclaimer #2: Do not mistake any of the satire below for a backhanded insult to my profession or any of my patients. I love what I do. But every job has its mundane or less-than-glamorous tasks. Every job. For a secretary, it might be filing. For a stay-at-home mom it might be laundry. For an accountant, it might be accounting. For me, well, the scenario below definitely constitutes one of the less-than-glamorous things I have to do in my profession. For the purposes of patient anonymity, details are changed slightly. Enjoy. (Though if you do, you’re sick.) (Or, alternatively, you're meant for a career in colorectal surgery.)

In a recent visit to Mamichki’s house to see my Dochechka who is recovering from a recent lumbar spine operation, I bumped into a good friend of hers. One who, through the years, I’ve become friends with. (For the purposes of this post, we’ll call him Mr. KnowItAll.) (Which, for the record, he normally isn’t. Well, not seriously at least.) Mr. KnowItAll had just brought over a sushi lunch. My timing couldn’t have been any more impeccable. Free lunch! Woo hoo! As we sat down to a smorgasbord of raw fish, Mr. KnowItAll skillfully managed to redirect the topic of discussion from Doch’s recovery to the topic of the worst smell ever. Seemed a bit random at the time, but it’ll all tie together in a sec. Apparently he thought himself the authority on the worst smell on earth. Now…he knows what I do. And he knows where I work. Surely he knew that I’d have a story or two about foul smells. As I looked at him skeptically, he assured me he could top any story I might dig out of my surgical archives. I was all ears.

Mr. KnowItAll had volunteered in the ER at a county hospital about ten years ago. (Formerly an aspiring medical student, apparently this was the incident that changed his mind about his career choice.) He got called into an exam room. One with four other volunteers, a resident, and an attending physician already in it. Along with the 500 lb female patient who’s nudity was feebly concealed behind the less than adequate paper napkin they provided patients to change into for the physical exam. There were no stirrups on the exam table and this patient needed a gynecologic exam. Two volunteers on the right. Two on the left. They lifted and spread her mammoth, weighty legs. Mr. KnowItAll was assigned the task of holding up a flashlight, so as to illuminate the field for the resident performing the exam. Apparently, the patient, as evidenced by the aromatics that flooded the room upon the uncrossing of her legs, had not bathed in quite some time. Upon hearing this, Mamichki set down her piece of salmon nigiri. I ended up eating it for her since poor Mamichki proceeded to lose her appetite. (What can I say, it takes a lot to gross me out. Exhibit A: See below.) So that was it. An unsavory vulva. Foul, sure, but…

“Childsplay!” I chortled. I didn’t know I could chortle, but turns out I can. And haughtily. “That’s weak.”

Mr. KnowItAll looked at me with fish eggs stuck to his lips and eyes that shouted: Bring It On.

“Are you sure?” I always ask this of my willing victims. He nodded. And continued to shovel fish into his mouth.

I dug into my mental cabinet of Grosser Than Gross stories. I got to the P file. And pulled out one of the Peri-Rectal Abscess cases. 51 year old, diabetic, corpulent, follicularly gifted man comes in to the ER complaining of fever, chills, and excruciating anal pain for the last few days. The ER doc calls a surgical consult. This is where I come in. I examine him. Look at his bloodwork. Look at the CT scan that the ER had obtained of his pelvis. And I determine that this guy needs to go to the OR. He had a peri-rectal abscess. (See Figure 1, the little blob on the right is a much smaller version of what this patient had.) (For those of you who don’t know what abscesses are, they are a localized collection of pus usually with surrounding swelling and inflammation. As for why people get them, that’s a whole chapter in and of itself. This is not that kind of blog.) (It’s a worse-than-that kind of blog, actually.)

Now. Abscesses are gross. They’re gross anywhere. On the arm, face, shoulder. Gross. But near the ass, they’re even grosser. They can track from the skin, up into the tissue planes right alongside the rectum for inches and inches, becoming huge pockets of purulence, sometimes fistulizing with the rectum. AKA connecting with the rectum. Which means…yes, shit meets pus. Now that’s the kind of mingling you don’t want going on at your party. And that’s what this guy had. In his bum. We take him to the OR for an incision and drainage, the treatment for an abscess. I don a face mask, shoe protectors, an impermeable gown, two pairs of sterile gloves. The anesthesiologist places the patient under general anesthesia. Prep. Drape. Scalpel. In one swift movement, I incise the abscess. And proceed to get showered. Bathed, if you will.

With projectile.
Shitty.
Pus.

Or purulent shit. (Depending on how you want to look at it.) Either way, a torrent of frothy, feculent ass frappuccino. (This explains why I don’t drink frappuccinos.) (This also explains why I wear impermeable gowns.) And the smell! Oh the smell! Imagine rotting flesh being eaten by a vulture whose stomach contents are then pumped out, fried in a skillet with a pat of butter, eaten and then shit out the other end. Then multiply what that must smell like by 14.3. (Just a rough estimate of the caliber of stench we’re talkin’ about here.) In an attempt to be helpful, the circulating OR nurse put some peppermint oil on my face mask near my nose. But that only conjured the virtual olfactory equivalent of peppermint flavored ass gum. Which, call me crazy, I don’t think would market well.

Upon finishing my account, I looked up at Mr. KnowItAll. I think he actually gagged at one point. He’d certainly stopped eating long ago. Then, silently, he threw both his hands up in sweet, sweet surrender.

And that’s how I got lots and lots of free sushi all to myself.

Don’t challenge me to a grosser than gross game. Just don’t.

(I warned you.)

It's funny cuz it's true

2007-01-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

It was the new years resolution of many of my single girlfriends this year to “take control of their dating life” and join an on-line dating service. Now, I agree, this screams of frantic XX’s, grasping with white knuckles at the last bastion of hope against nature’s apathetically applied expiration date on ovaries. But we’re talking about sane, intelligent, attractive, accomplished women here. Only a few of whom are “frantic.” And none of whom, that I know of, are particularly stressed about reproducing soon. So what gives? Why the tide shift to electronic loooove resumes and touched up digital picture first impressions? Who knows. (I have my theories.) (Later.)

All I know is that I’m going to enjoy the vicarious ride while I can. And besides, who am I to rain on the parade of e-lovin’? I have Match.com to thank for The Brit being in my life. Well, indirectly. Ok. Here’s our story, in a nutshell: My Friend logs onto Match.com. Likes Boy’s profile. My Friend and Boy meet and begin dating. My Friend and Boy throw a party. I come to the party to see My Friend. The Brit comes to the party to see his friend, Boy. The Brit and I meet and exchange witty banter at said party. And voila. The rest is history. Oh, as are My Friend and Boy. They no longer date. But still, Match.com worked for us. And neither one of us had to log on. Yay on-line dating! Woo hoo!

Anyway, back to the living vicariously through my friends bit…one of them asked me to proofread her profile before she posted it. Why yes, I said. Yes I will! With goodie goodie gum drops glee, we logged on together. Just for fun, we first perused some of the other profiles. You know, just to get a feel for the kind of stuff people write about themselves. (Or rather, the kind of “crap” people write about themselves.) And perhaps for a laugh or two. Glee quickly turned to eye-gouging boredom after reading profile after profile of a “fun-loving easy-going guy seeking like-minded woman…” Jeez. Does that lifeless dribble actually get game? Whatever. I decided then and there that my friend’s profile would need to be funny. Even a touch obnoxious. ANYTHING to be different from the drab, garden variety profiles already up there. So we turned our attentions to making a few minor adjustments.

Here were my suggestions for her Likes/Dislikes section:
My likes include: sunset walks on the beach, Polynesian dining, rainbows
My dislikes include: mean people, tuberculosis

Vetoed. On the grounds that some might not get it was a joke. (Sadly.)

Ok. How about my suggestions for the Ideal First Date section:
One in which my date immediately proves to me his manliness…by perhaps slaying a dragon or getting to the seventh level of Super Mario Brothers. (It’s an either/or scenario, his choice.)

Vetoed again.

Needless to say, after the above vetoes, she really didn’t like my suggestion for what she should put for the What you’ve learned from your past relationships section:
That I screw like a porn star.*

But she did humor me on some of my suggestions. Let the dating fun begin!

*She has actually been told that. By two different guys. Not to worry, dear Brit. I’m taking notes.

I am now a musical genius...

2007-01-07T17:45:00.000-08:00

My inability to breathe has been replaced with the talent (?) of being able to whistle through my left nostril with each inhale. My very own nasal kazoo! I should take this act to the circus!

(I now pledge to cease pissing and moaning...)